Sickened and affrighted, Lotte hurried from the house, her hopes once more dashed to the ground, her heart bursting with agony, no one to go to for counsel or assistance. What was to be done?
Almost frantic, she wandered about without an aim, feeling that she could not go back to the kind people who had sheltered her, unless she had some prospect of lifting herself out of her desolate destitution, and recompensing them, at least, for her board, although she could never repay the service and the attention they had rendered to her.
She wandered through the streets, growing weak and faint from an exertion to which she was not equal, and from being many hours without food, gradually becoming desperate, as hopeless. She thought of the coming night and the dark waters that swept silently beneath the frowning arches of the bridges which spanned their breadth, and an ever-recurring thought kept ringing in her ears--
suddenly her eyes fell upon a printed bill; it said: “One thousand cap-front hands wanted!” Not a second elapsed between her discovery of that bill and the resting of her trembling hand upon the knocker of the door. Her timid summons was responded to, and her application for work met with success.
She was requested to enter a room and to sit down, and “make a pattern.” She was furnished with materials, and it was not long before she produced a “front,” which gave great satisfaction to the employer. The answers to inquiries put to her being deemed satisfactory, materials for twelve dozen fronts were given to her, in a box, which she was to return with her work.
With a light heart and a heavy parcel she returned to Mrs. Bantom. Constant work was promised to her, provided she was punctual, and her work was approved of. She had no fears about that. She promised the work on the following Friday night. The task could only be accomplished by incessant toil, but she resolved to accomplish it, and she did.
In the little squalid bedroom she sat to her exacting toil; few were the hours of sleep she obtained during the time between the commencement and the close of her labours, but she was rewarded by completing the last front within an hour of the time specified. More fit for bed than for a journey through the crowded streets, she staggered rather than walked to the house of her new employer.