way and sleep exactly as well? So long as they brought
home a half dollar for each day, what mattered it when
they brought it? But Jurgis declared that from this to
ceasing to come at all would not be a very long step, and
so it was decided that Vilimas and Nikalojus should
return to school in the fall, and that instead Elzbieta
should go out and get some work, her place at home being
taken by her younger daughter.

Little Kotrina was like most children of the poor, pre~
maturely made old; she had to take care of her little
brother, who was a cripple, and also of the baby; she
had to cook the meals and wash the dishes and clean
house, and have supper ready when the workers came
home in the evening. She was only thirteen, and small
for her age, but she did all this without a murmur; and
her mother went out, and after trudging a couple of days
about the yards, settled down as a servant of a "sausage-
machine."

Elzbieta was used to working, but she found this change
a hard one, for the reason that she had to stand motionless
upon her feet from seven o'clock in the morning till half-
past twelve, and again from one till half-past five. For
the first few days it seemed to her that she could not stand
it -- she suffered almost as much as Jurgis had from the
fertilizer, and would come out at sundown with her head
fairly reeling. Besides this, she was working in one of
the dark holes, by electric light, and the dampness, too,
was deadly -- there were always puddles of water on the
floor, and a sickening odor of moist flesh in the room.
The people who worked here followed the ancient custom
of nature, whereby the ptarmigan is the color of dead
leaves in the fall and of snow in the winter, and the cha~
meleon, who is black when he lies upon a stump and turns
green when he moves to a leaf. The men and women who
worked in this department were precisely the color of the
"fresh country sausage" they made.

The sausage-room was an interesting place to visit, for
two or three minutes, and provided that you did not look
at the people; the machines were perhaps the most wonder~

[[157]]

p156 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p157w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p158

v?