"'Specks!' Damaged fruit, half rotten. The garbage of the rich sold as a
feast to these poor little ones?" cried Nellie, a hot anger in her face
and voice that made Ned dumb.

She entered the doorway. Ned followed her through a room where a man and
a couple of boys were hammering away at some boots, reaching thereby a
narrow, creaking stairway, hot as a chimney, almost pitch dark, being
lighted only by an occasional half-opened door, up which he stumbled
clumsily. Through one of these open doors he caught a glimpse of a couple
of girls sewing; through another of a woman with a baby in arms
tidying-up a bare floored room, which seemed to be bedroom, kitchen and
dining room in one; from behind a closed door came the sound of voices,
one shrilly laughing. Unused to stairways his knees ached before they
reached the top. He was glad enough when Nellie knocked loudly at a door
through which came the whirring of a sewing machine. The noise stopped
for a moment while a sharp voice called them to "come in," then started
again. Nellie opened the door.

At the open window of a small room, barely furnished with a broken iron
bedstead, some case boards knocked together for a table and fixed against
the wall, a couple of shaky chairs and a box, a sharp featured woman sat
working a machine, as if for dear life. The heat of the room was made
hotter by the little grate in which a fire had recently been burning and
on which still stood the teapot. Some cups and a plate or two, with a cut
loaf of bread and a jam tin of sugar, littered the table. The scanty bed
was unmade. The woman wore a limp cotton dress of uncertain colour,
rolled up at the sleeves and opened at the neck for greater coolness. She
was thin and sharp; she was so busy you understood that she had no time
to be clean and tidy. She seemed pleased to see Nellie and totally
indifferent at seeing Ned, but kept on working after nodding to them.