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Updated: May 1, 2025
There were thousands of men who came to this place, and sooner or later she would meet one of them. "And besides," Marija added, "I can't do anything. I'm no good I take dope. What could you do with me?" "Can't you stop?" Jurgis cried. "No," she answered, "I'll never stop. What's the use of talking about it I'll stay here till I die, I guess. It's all I'm fit for."
Evening after evening Jurgis and Ona would sit and figure the expenses, calculating the term of their separation. They could not possibly manage it decently for less than two hundred dollars, and even though they were welcome to count in the whole of the earnings of Marija and Jonas, as a loan, they could not hope to raise this sum in less than four or five months.
"Br-r-r!" shivered some one, and the women got up and entered the various doors which lined the hallway. "Come," said Marija, and took Jurgis into her room, which was a tiny place about eight by six, with a cot and a chair and a dressing stand and some dresses hanging behind the door.
In the corner was a blanket, with a form half showing beneath it; and beside it lay Elzbieta, whether crying or in a faint, Jurgis could not tell. Marija was pacing the room, screaming and wringing her hands. He clenched his hands tighter yet, and his voice was hard as he spoke. "How did it happen?" he asked. Marija scarcely heard him in her agony.
Four weeks Marija hunted, and half of a fifth week. Of course she stopped paying her dues to the union. She lost all interest in the union, and cursed herself for a fool that she had ever been dragged into one. She had about made up her mind that she was a lost soul, when somebody told her of an opening, and she went and got a place as a "beef-trimmer."
She came down into the basement of the house to meet him, and he stood by the door with his hat in his hand, saying, "I've got work now, and so you can leave here." But Marija only shook her head. There was nothing else for her to do, she said, and nobody to employ her. She could not keep her past a secret girls had tried it, and they were always found out.
And this old common-sense view she labored to impress upon Jurgis, pleading with him with tears in her eyes. Ona was dead, but the others were left and they must be saved. She did not ask for her own children. She and Marija could care for them somehow, but there was Antanas, his own son.
She was compelled, at these parties, to spend most of her time at the refreshment table, for she could not dance with anybody except other women and very old men; Tamoszius was of an excitable temperament, and afflicted with a frantic jealousy, and any unmarried man who ventured to put his arm about the ample waist of Marija would be certain to throw the orchestra out of tune.
Marija listened with sympathy; it was easy to believe the tale of his late starvation, for his face showed it all. "You found me just in the nick of time," she said. "I'll stand by you I'll help you till you can get some work." "I don't like to let you " he began. "Why not? Because I'm here?" "No, not that," he said. "But I went off and left you " "Nonsense!" said Marija. "Don't think about it.
Marija made up her mind that, come what might, she would stay there and keep her place; but as nearly all did the same, all through the long, cold night, she got very little closer to the bank for that. Toward evening Jurgis came; he had heard the story from the children, and he brought some food and dry wraps, which made it a little easier.
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