Mag replied with a coarse jest, and the others laughed roughly, and Mysie and Robert, not understanding, wondered why the old man got angry.
Thus the day wore on, men and women cursed while familiarities took place which were barely hidden from the children. Talk was coarse and obscenely suggestive, and the whole atmosphere was brutalizing. Long, however, before the day was ended, Robert and Mysie were feeling as if every bone in their little bodies would break.
"Just take anither wee rest, Mysie," said Robert. "I'll keep pickin' as hard as I can, an' ye'll no' be sae muckle missed."
"Oh, I'll hae to keep on, too," she replied, almost despairingly, with a hint of tears in her voice. "Ye mind I promised to work hard, an' ye said I was a guid worker, too. If I dinna' keep on I micht only get a shillin' a day."
"But I'll pick as much as the twa o' us can do," pursued Robert, with persuasive voice. "I'll gang harder, until ye can get a wee rest."
So Mysie, in sheer exhaustion, stopped for a little, and the dizzy feeling was soon gone again. Yet the horrible pain in the back troubled them all day, and the dizziness returned frequently, but the others assured them that they'd soon get used to it. Their hands were cut, bruised and dirty, and poor little Mysie felt often that she would like to cry, but "six and sixpence a week" kept time in her heart to all her troubles, and seemed to drive her onward with relentless force.
With rough kindness the women encouraged the two children, and did much to make their lot easier. But it was a trying day--a hard, heartbreaking day, a day of tears and pains and discouragement, a horrible Gethsemane of sweat and agony, whose memory not even "six and sixpence a week" would ever eradicate from their minds, though it made the day bearable.
The great wheels groaned and swished like the imprisoned monster of Robert's imaginings, and at last came to a halt at the end of the shift; but in the pattern which they had that day woven into the web of industry, there were two bright threads--threads of great beauty and high worth--threads which the very gods seemed proud of seeing there, twisted and twined, and lending color of richest hue to the whole design--threads of glorious fiber and rare quality, which sparkled and shone like the neck of a pigeon in the sunshine. These threads in the web of industry, which had shone that day for the first time, were the lives of two little children.