Nellie did not object. After wiping her hands, face and neck with her
handkerchief she put on her gloves and hat. The sharp-faced woman was
already at the machine and amid the din, which drowned their good-byes,
they departed as they came. Ned felt more at ease when his feet felt the
first step of the narrow creaking stairway. It is hardly a pleasant
sensation for a man to be in the room of a stranger who, without any
unfriendliness, does not seem particularly aware that he is there. They
left the door open. Far down the stifling stairs Ned could hear the
ceaseless whirring of the machine driven by the woman who slaved
ceaselessly for her children's bread in this Sydney sink. He looked
around for the children when they got to the alley again but could not
see them among the urchins who lolled about half-suffocated now. The sun
was almost overhead for they had been upstairs for an hour. The heat in
this mere canyon path between cliffs of houses was terrible. Ned himself
began to feel queerly.

"Let's get out of this, Nellie," he said.

"How would you like never to be able to get out of it?" she answered, as
they turned towards the bustling street, opposite to the way they had
previously come.

"Who's that Mrs. Somerville?" he asked, not answering.

"I got to know her when I lived there," replied Nellie. "Her husband used
to be well off, I fancy, but had bad luck and got down pretty low. There
was a strike on at some building and he went on as a laborer,
blacklegging. The pickets followed him to the house, abusing him, and
made him stubborn, but I got her alone that night and talked to her and