her courage.

"What's the matter, Nance?" asked Fidy.

"I'm hot!" said Nance, crossly. "It feels like the inside of a
oven in here!"

"I bet Maw forgot to open the window into the shaft," said Fidy.

"Windows don't do no good," said Nance; "they just let in smells. Wisht I
was a man! You bet I would be up at Slap Jack's! I'd set under a 'lectric
fan, an' pour cold things down me an' listen at the 'phoney-graf ever'
night. Hush! Is that our baby?"

A faint wail made her scramble out of bed and rush into the back room
where she gathered a hot, squirming bundle into her arms and peered
anxiously into its wizened face. She knew the trick babies had of dying
when the weather was hot! Two other beloved scraps of humanity had been
taken away from her, and she was fiercely determined to keep this one.
Lugging the baby to the window, she scrambled over the sill.

The fire-escape was cluttered with all the paraphernalia that doubles the
casualty of a tenement fire, but she cleared a space with her foot and
sat down on the top step. Beside her loomed the blank warehouse wall, and
from the narrow passage-way below came the smell of garbage. The clanging
of cars and the rumbling of trucks mingled with the nearer sounds of
whirring sewing machines in Lavinski's sweat-shop on the floor below.
From somewhere around the corner came, at intervals, the sharp cry of a
woman in agony. With that last sound Nance was all too familiar. The
coming and going of a human life were no mystery to her. But each time