A point that should be accentuated in Molly Davousta's account is the
price of shoes. No one item of expense among working girls is more
suggestive. The cost of shoes is unescapable. A girl may make over an old
hat with a bit of ribbon or a flower, or make a new dress from a
dollar's worth of material, but for an ill-fitting, clumsy pair of shoes
she must pay at least $2; and no sooner has she bought them than she must
begin to skimp because in a month or six weeks she will need another
pair. The hour or two hours' walk each day through streets thickly
spread, oftener than not, with a slimy, miry dampness literally dissolves
these shoes. Long after up-town streets are dry and clean, those of the
congested quarters display the muddy travesty of snow in the city. The
stockings inside these cheap shoes, with their worn linings, wear out
even more quickly than the shoes. It is practically impossible to mend
stockings besides walking to work, making one's waists, and doing one's
washing.
All Molly Davousta's cares, her anxiety about shoes and her foreboding
concerning seasonal work, were increased by her position of family
responsibility.
In the same way, in the course of her seasonal work, family
responsibility pressed on Rita Karpovna.
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