like herself, going through the slow, heavy work, for, as Pike
the manager would have told you, "three dollars a week,--good
wages these tight times." For nothing more? Some other meaning
may have fallen from their faces into this girl's subtile
intuition in the instant's glance,--cheerfuller, remoter aims,
hidden in the most sensual face,--homeliest home-scenes, low
climbing ambitions, some delirium of pleasure to come,--whiskey,
if nothing better: aims in life like yours differing in degree.
Needing only to make them the same----did you say what?

She had reached the street now,--a back-street, a crooked sort of
lane rather, running between endless piles of warehouses. She
hurried down it to gain the suburbs, for she lived out in the
country. It was a long, tiresome walk through the outskirts of
the town, where the dwelling-houses were,--long rows of two-story
bricks drabbled with soot-stains. It was two years since she had
been in the town. Remembering this, and the reason why she had
shunned it, she quickened her pace, her face growing stiller than
before. One might have fancied her a slave putting on a mask,
fearing to meet her master. The town, being unfamiliar to her,
struck her newly. She saw the expression on its face better. It
was a large trading city, compactly built, shut in by hills. It
had an anxious, harassed look, like a speculator concluding a
keen bargain; the very dwelling-houses smelt of trade, having
shops in the lower stories; in the outskirts, where there are
cottages in other cities, there were mills here; the trees, which
some deluded dreamer had planted on the flat pavements, had all
grown up into abrupt Lombardy poplars, knowing their best policy
was to keep out of the way; the boys, playing marbles under them,
played sharply "for keeps;" the bony old dray-horses, plodding