The Home of Poverty.
The time has come to introduce some new characters, who will play a part in my story.
Five minutes' walk from Bleecker street, in a tall, shabby tenement house, divided, as the custom is, into suites of three rooms, or rather two, one being a common room, and the other being subdivided into two small, narrow chambers, lived Rose and Adeline Beaufort, respectively nineteen and seventeen years of age, and their young brother Harry, a boy of thirteen.
It is five o'clock in the afternoon when we look in upon them.
"Rose," said her sister, "you look very tired. Can't you leave off for an hour and rest?"
Rose was bending over a vest which she was making. Her drooping figure and the lines on her face bespoke fatigue, yet her fingers swiftly plied the needle, and she seemed anxiously intent upon her task.
She shook her head in answer to her sister's words.
"No, Addie," she said; "it won't do for me to stop. You know how little I earn at the most. I can't make more than one vest in a day, and I get but thirty-five cents apiece."
"I know it, Rose," replied Adeline, with a sigh; "it is a great deal of work to do for that paltry sum. If I were able to help you we might get along better, even at such wages. I feel that I am very useless, and a burden on you and Harry."
"You mustn't think anything of the kind, Addie," said Rose, quickly, looking affectionately at her sister. "You know you are not strong enough to work."