“My beauty, you be careful, or that fine spirit of yours will get you into trouble some of these days.”
Dido gave him a scornful glance as she and Maggie walked out, and the door was closed behind them.
She related her failure to the waiting girls, and they all went home after promising to be there Monday morning to prevent others taking their places. They seemed to feel the consequence of their own act less than Dido and rather welcomed an extra holiday.
That evening Dido pawned all her furniture and extra clothes, and the money she received for them, added to her savings, went towards saving the body of Mrs. Williams from the Potter’s Field. There was not quite enough to pay the undertaker, so Dido was forced to borrow the remainder from Blind Gilbert, the beggar, who occupied the room in the rear of that occupied by the Williamses.
Monday morning the girls all gathered around the entrance to the factory and urged the new girls, who came in answer to an advertisement, not to apply for work and thereby injure their chances of making the strike successful.
Only the foreigners stubbornly refused the girls’ request, and they applied for and received the work which the others had abandoned. Tuesday more foreigners were given work, and the weaker strikers, getting frightened at this, quitted their companions and returned to the factory.
This so enraged the other strikers that they waited for the deserters in the evening, when they were going home from work. They first tried to persuade their weaker companions to reconsider their decision and somehow the argument ended in a fight.
Dido Morgan, who was stationed as a picket further down the street, came rushing up to the struggling, pulling, crying girls, hoping to pacify them.
Almost instantly foreman Flint arrived, accompanied by an officer. Pointing out Dido, with a diabolical grin he told the officer to arrest her. The now frightened girls fell back while the officer dragged Dido away, despite her protests.
That night she spent in the station-house, and in the morning she was taken to the Essex Market Court, where the Judge, listening to the policeman’s highly imaginative story, asked her what she had to say, and though she endeavored to tell the truth, hustled her off with “ten days or ten dollars.”