There was the child
who had newly left school, and was now invited to consider the
question of how to keep herself alive; there was the woman of
uncertain age, who had spent long years of long days in the
atmosphere of workrooms, and showed the result in her parchmenty
cheek and lack-lustre eye; and between these extremes came all the
various types of the London crafts-girl: she who is young enough to
hope that disappointments may yet be made up for by the future; she
who is already tasting such scanty good as life had in store for
her; she who has outlived her illusions and no longer cares to look
beyond the close of the week. If regularly engaged as time-workers,
they made themselves easy in the prospect of wages that allowed them
to sleep under a roof and eat at certain intervals of the day; if
employed on piece-work they might at any moment find themselves
wageless, but this, being a familiar state of things, did not
trouble them. With few exceptions, they were clad neatly; on the
whole, they plied their task in wonderful contentment. The general
tone of conversation among them was not high; moralists unfamiliar
with the ways of the nether world would probably have applied a term
other than negative to the laughing discussions which now and then
enlivened this or that group; but it was very seldom indeed that a
child newly arriving heard anything with which she was not already
perfectly familiar.
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