THREE:"Is she coming?" he called up, and Charlotte, at my side, spoke downward:Rose Lomas came slowly over the top of the hill. She was hatless, and her short, curly hair blew about her face, for a slight breeze had sprung up in the wake of the sunset. She wore a navy blue jacket over a white muslin blouse with a deep V at the breast. There was a fair stretch of plump leg, stockinged in black cashmere, between the edge of her dark skirt and the beginning of the tall boots that had taken so long to button up. She walked with her chin tilted upwards and her eyes half closed, and her hands were thrust into the slanting pockets of her jacket. FORE:It could be proved beyond a shadow of doubt, and by reference to all known laws of anatomy, that he did not exist."It was like a great shed, and it had the solid ground for a floor. On this floor there were kettles, or pans, set in brickwork, and each one of them had a little furnace under it, in which there was a charcoal fire. There must have been two hundred of these pans, and the heat from them was so great that it almost took away my breath. I don't believe I could exist there a day, and yet there were people who had to spend the entire day[Pg 268] in the firing-room, and go there day after day besides. Many of them were women, and some of them had little children strapped to their backs, and there was a whole lot of children in a little room at one side of the shed, where a couple of women were looking after them. How I did pity the poor things! Fred and I just emptied our pockets of all the small change we could find in them for the benefit of the babies, and I wish we could have given them more. But there was hardly a cry from any of them, and they seemed as happy and contented as though their mothers were queens, instead of toiling over the firing-pan in that hot room for ten or fifteen cents a day.