Again, matters were
always easier to these girls of easy virtue, for they got better jobs,
and could even flout the authority of lesser gaffers, if their relations
with the higher ones were as indicated.
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.
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