It was evening, and from the great gates of Messrs. Hathaway's factory poured a ceaseless stream of women. But not this evening did that stream flow down the street with its usual swift and uninterrupted course. There were checks in it—obstacles of groups that talked excitedly and forgot to progress—while others in eager haste eddied round them. On the high wall by the gate, a bill-poster was covering a "War Savings" placard with another of different meaning. A black cloud of smoke drifted away from the tall chimneys and was not reinforced other than by faint and lessening wisps.
A young woman, one of those whose urgent haste trifled not with talk, hurried down the street, stopped before one of the neatest house-fronts, tremblingly thrust a key into the latch, opened and ran breathlessly upstairs.
A grey-haired old woman rose from a wooden chair by the side of a cradle in a clean and modestly furnished room. At the entrance of her daughter-in-law she laid a finger on her lips and looked warningly to the infant. Then remarking an obvious distress, she changed colour.
"What's the matter, Ann?" she whispered, shaking with a sudden alarm. She had to steady herself by the support of the table. "Not—Jim?"
The young woman shook her head, controlled her panting breath.
"Hathaway's!" she brought out. "Closing down!"
The elder stared speechlessly for a moment, then seated herself with that blank mute resignation of the aged poor, long disillusioned of any title to good fortune. The fingers of her unshapely hands twined and untwined themselves tensely in her lap.
"Don't you hear, mother?" said the young woman irritably. "Hathaway's are closing down!"
"Oh, dear!" the old woman raised a face that was strained with imminent tears. "I knew it 'ud never last—I knew it 'ud never last!"
"What we shall do, 'Eaven knows!" said Ann, viciously accenting the sole possible fount of knowledge. "They're all closing down—all of 'em, all round!" Her gesture, as she unpinned her hat and put it, with an excess of energy, on the table, testified to the completeness of the closed horizon. She stood looking at the sleeping child, her brows bent, her mouth troubled. Then suddenly she flung herself on her knees and buried her head in the old woman's lap, shaking with sobs.