“I am no worse than usual,” said she. “I feel better than I generally do in the morning. I haven't coughed any more, if I have as much, and I am holding my dress up high, and you know how warm the factory is. It will be enough sight warmer than it is at home. It is cold at home.”
“Lloyd don't have to save coal,” said Abby, bitterly, “but that don't alter the fact of your getting your skirts draggled.”
Maria pulled up her skirts so high that she exposed her slender ankles, then seeing that she had done so, she let them fall with a quick glance at two men behind them.
“The snow will shake right off; it's light, Abby,” she said.
“It ain't light. I should think you might listen to Ellen, if you won't to me.”
Ellen pressed close to Maria, and pulled her thin arm through her own. “Look here,” she said, “don't you think—”
Then Maria burst out with a pitiful emphasis. “I've got to go,” she said. “Father had a bad spell last night; he can't get out. He'll lose his place this time, we are afraid, and there's a note coming due that father says he's paid, but the man didn't give it up, and he's got to pay it over again; the lawyer says there is no other way, and we can't let John Sargent do everything. He's got a sister out West he's about supporting since her husband died last fall. I've got to go to work; we've got to have the money, Ellen, and as for my cough, I have always coughed. It hasn't killed me yet, and I guess it won't yet for a while.” Maria said the last with a reckless gayety which was unusual to her.
Abby trudged on ahead with indignant emphasis. “I'd like to know what good it is going to do to work and earn and pay up money if everybody is going to be killed by it?” she said, without turning her head.
Ellen pulled up Maria's coat-collar around her neck and put an extra fold of her dress-skirt into her hand.
“There, you can hold it up as high as that, it looks all right,” said she.