“Yes? Where?”
“Oh, he works on the night shift. He comes in ’beaout half-a-past five and stays till six in the mornin’.”
I went over to the other dwarf of the couple, older, evidently, than the boy “most six.” Below her red cotton frock hung a long apron which reached to the ground. Her hair was short and shaggy, her face bloated, her eyes like a depression in the flesh, and about her mouth trailed streaks of tobacco. It seemed absurd to question her. Oblivion was the only thing that could have been mercifully tendered—even the peace of death could hardly have relaxed those tense features, cast in the dogged mould of suffering.
“How old are you?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“What do you earn?”
She shook her head again.
Her fingers did not for a moment stop in their swift manipulation of the broken thread. Then, as if she had suddenly remembered something, she said:
“I’ve only been workin’ here a day.”