Meg wept loudly for a few moments, then: “What are ye goin’ to do now?” she asked, drying her eyes.
“I don’t know.”
“There’s often a chance goin’ in the rag-store where I work and it’s not a hard job at all,” said the old woman. “The job may be a wee bit dirty and clorty, but think it over. Six shillin’s a week is the pay to start wi’, then it rises to eight.”
“Thanks for the help that ye are to me,” said Norah; “and when d’ye think that I’ll get the job?”
“Maybe at any time now, for there’s one of the young ones goin’ to get marrit a fortnight come to-morrow,” said the old woman. “Then there’s a woman that lives at No. 27 of this street, Helen McKay is her name; ‘Tuppenny Helen,’ the ones on the stairhead ca’ her. She takes care of children for twopence a day.”
“I’m not goin’ to leave my child,” cried Norah. She spoke fiercely, angrily. “D’ye think that I would give up my child to a woman like Tuppenny Helen? God sees that I can keep my own child whatever happens to me!”
“Whatever ye say it’s not for me to say the word agen it,” said Meg, surprised at Norah’s wrath.
“Could I take the boy with me if I get a job?”
“Nae fear; nae fear of that,” said the old woman. “It would smother a child in a week in yon place. Dust flyin’ all over the place; dirty rags with creepin’ things and crawlin’ things and maybe diseases on them; it’s a foulsome den. But folks maun eat and folks maun earn siller, and that’s why some hae to wark in a place like a rag-store. But dinna take the child wi’ ye there. For one thing ye winna be allowed and for another the feelthy place would kill the dear little thing in less than a week.”
For a fortnight following Norah looked in vain for a job at which she might work with the child beside her. At the end of that time the old woman spoke again of a vacant post in the store where she laboured. Norah put the child out to Twopenny Helen, a stumpy little woman with very large feet and hacked hands, then applied for and obtained the vacant post in the rag-store.