"Two hours lost, if I go. No good. Two hours' work means twenty-four cents. What's the use?"
"What's the matter with him?"
"Consumption. I die soon, next year, perhaps. All the children sick."
The boy looked around at 'all the children.' There were five of them in that room, and all—even the youngest, a baby four years old—were knotting the feathers on the plume. The baby could hardly do it, but he was learning.
"Many hands make light work," said Hamilton as cheerfully as he could. "With so many little workers you ought to get along finely."
"Yes," the woman answered listlessly, "we get along. Some days we make as much as a dollar!"
"Each of you?"
"Do we look so rich? One dollar for everybody. But that is only sometimes, when I am not too sick. We can get a little more than five dollar the week, by working all the time."
The boy hastily asked the remaining questions on the schedule, found everything correctly reported and relieving his conscience by giving a little help out of his own pocket, he left for the next place.
On the floor below was a family working on fur, every one of them with hacking coughs caused by tiny particles of fur in the lungs.