"What does the company do in such cases? Where an operative breaks down at twenty-five?"
"The company says there was a phthisical tendency."
"And will they give nothing in return for the two lives they have taken?"
"They will probably pay for Dillon's care at the hospital, and they have taken the wife back as a scrubber."
"To clean those uncleanable floors? She's not fit for it!"
"She must work, fit for it or not; and there is less strain in scrubbing than in bending over the looms or cards. The pay is lower, of course, but she's very grateful for being taken back at all, now that she's no longer a first-class worker."
Miss Brent's face glowed with a fine wrath. "She can't possibly stand more than two or three months of it without breaking down!"
"Well, you see they've told her that in less than that time her husband will be at work again."
"And what will the company do for them when the wife is a hopeless invalid, and the husband a cripple?"
Amherst again uttered the dry laugh with which he had met her suggestion of an emergency hospital. "I know what I should do if I could get anywhere near Dillon—give him an overdose of morphine, and let the widow collect his life-insurance, and make a fresh start."