"Why, what can you possibly do?"
"Oh, a good many little odd jobs,–throwing the lumps out of the passages, and doing whatever comes to hand,–helping to load sometimes. I'm very glad to get it.
"They talk of raising me some money to buy a bit shanty," she added. "I can pick up a little to do, perhaps, then, that'll keep me out of the mine. It don't seem to be a woman's place, somehow. Not but what they're all very respectful and kind."
"Are there other women there?"
"Not many in this mine. Over on the hill where the men struck once or twice, there's a-many, and some of 'em do men's work; but a woman had better be home if she's got a home."
The sentiment found an echo in my heart as I looked on the pale, sorrowful face, so commonplace, yet so interesting, from its very sadness.
Down in the Mines.
"Wouldn't you like to go in?" she asked. "Ladies do, sometimes."
She placed the child in the arms of the girl,–a quiet little thing, and I followed her into the side of the hill, already thickly covered with working men, with the star of light burning on their foreheads, so faint and blue in the sunshine, so bright in the darkness.
I shall never forget the sensations of that hour. In and on, with a sense of continually descending; on each side, the great glistening black walls of anthracite; here and there small streams of water trickling down; now and then a dull thud of pick; a muffled, low roar, ringing in one's ears wherever there was a passage in which people were at work.