But Onny remained silent, sulky, at it seemed. It was the younger girl who answered him.
‘They say it’s a fine life they have out there. There’s good money to be earned, and mightn’t we be coming home some day with a fortune?’
‘But aren’t you sorry to leave Ireland?’
Again he looked at the elder girl, and this time was rewarded with a flash of defiant bitterness from her eyes.
‘Sorry, is it? No, but I’m glad!’
‘Onny’s always saying that there was nothing to be earned in the factory. And she got more than the rest of us. Wasn’t she the first girl that Sister Mary Aloysius picked out of the school when the young lady from England came over to teach us? She was the best worker they had.’
‘It’s true what she says,’ said Onny. ‘I was the best worker they had. I worked for them for three years, and all I was getting at the end of it was six shillings a week. Why would I be working for that when I might be getting wages like Bridgy’s in America? What sense would there be in it?’
‘But why did you work for such wages?’
‘Well, now,’ said the younger girl, ‘how could we be refusing the Reverend Mother when she came round the town herself, and gave warning that we’d all be wanted?’
‘There’s few,’ continued Onny, without noticing her sister, ‘that earned as much as I did. Many a girl works there and has no more than one and ninepence to take home at the end of the week.’