The exigencies of trade demanded endless variety of designs in carpets and rugs, and so all day Johann Bremer stood in front of a great sheet of cardboard, marked off in tiny numbered squares, on which he painted with many colors. For this he received thirty dollars a week, and his son received twelve dollars as his assistant--painting in the same colors upon all the squares of certain numbers, and so completing a symmetrical design. It was a very good job, and Johann prodded his son to devote his energies to the evolving of new designs. But the boy hated it all--thinking only of his music. And his music meant to him, not sentimental dreaming, but a passionate clutch into the infinite, a battle for deliverance from the bondage of the world. So Johann himself had been in his youth, when he had become a revolutionist, and before beer and gravy and domesticity had tamed him.
No one said a word about these things. It was all in the playing. And now and then Samuel stole a glance about the room and discovered yet another soul's tragedy. Sophie, too, was drinking in the music, and life had crept into her face, and her breath came quick and fast, and now and then she furtively brushed away a tear.
Afterwards, as they walked home, she said to Samuel, “I don't know if it's good for me to listen to music like that.”
“Why not?” he asked--“if it makes you happy.”
“But it makes me unhappy afterwards. It makes me want things. And I get restless--and when I go back to the factory it's so much harder.”
“What do you do in the factory?” asked Samuel.
“I'm what they call a bobbin-girl--I tie the threads on the bobbins when they are empty.”
“No, you mightn't think so. But you have to stand up all day; and it's doing the same thing all the time--the same thing the whole day long. You get dull--you never think about anything. And then the air is full of dust and the machinery roars. You get used to it, but I'm sure its bad for you.”
They walked for a while in silence. “Do you like to imagine things?” asked Sophie suddenly.
“I used to,” said she--“when I was younger.” It was so strange to Samuel to notice that this slip of a child always spoke of herself as old.
“I'm too tired, I think. But I've a lot of pictures up in my room--that I cut out of magazines that people gave me. Pictures of beautiful things--birds and flowers, and old castles, and fine ladies and gentlemen. And I used to make up stories about them, and imagine that I was there, and that all sorts of nice things were happening to me. Would you like to see my pictures?”