Soon after she arrived, she found employment in finishing men's vests,
at $6 or $7 a week, for ten hours' work a day. Living and saving with her
brother, she contrived to send home $4 a month. Between them, Nikolai and
Rita brought over their mother and the little brother. But, very soon
after they were all settled together, their mother died. They were
obliged to put the little brother into an institution. Then Nikolai fell
from a scaffolding and incapacitated himself, so that, after his partial
recovery, his wage was sufficient only for his own support, near his
work.

Rita now lived alone, spending $3.50 a month for a sleeping place in a
tenement, and for suppers $1.25 a week. Her luncheons and breakfasts,
picked up anywhere at groceries or push carts, amounted, when she was
working, to about 12 cents a day. At other times she often went without
both meals. For in the last year her average wage had been reduced to
$4.33 a week by over four months and a half of almost complete idleness.
Through nine weeks of this time she had an occasional day of work, and
for nine weeks none at all.

When she was working, she paid 60 cents a week carfare, 25 cents a month
to the Union, of which she was an enthusiastic member, and 10 cents a
month to a "Woman's Self-Education Society." The Union and this club
meant more to Rita than the breakfasts and luncheons she dispensed with,
and more, apparently, than dress, for which she had spent only $20 in a
year and a half.

Some months afterward, Mrs. Clark received word that Rita had solved many
of her difficulties by a happy marriage, and could hope that many of her
domestic anxieties were relieved.