“He’s a right dear lamb,” Mercy agreed. It wasn’t the babe’s fault he’d been born. What was done was done, and there was no changing it now. They’d have to make the best of things, which was why Mercy hadn’t let up on her job search even though she’d exhausted nearly every possibility.

It was all the more reason Mercy had made up her mind never to get married and have babies. This wasn’t the kind of world to bring a child into. Besides, if she ever got a hankering for a child, she only had to walk a city block to find a homeless orphan living in an alley and needing a home.

“The mill let us go.” Twiggy said the words so softly that Mercy almost missed them.

“You mean let you go early?” The question was a plea followed by a quaking deep inside.

Twiggy lifted her face away from Paul and met Mercy’s gaze directly. “I mean let us go, go.”

“But why?” Mercy couldn’t keep the desperation from her question.

“Don’t rightly know since there be plenty of rags piled high for sorting. But some are a-saying the need for paper ain’t what it used to be.”

The nearby paper mill employed women to do the dirty work of sorting through rags, pulling out the cloth that was too grimy and stained to be recycled, cutting away buttons, clips, and other small items, along with sorting out the garbage.

The women worked long shifts while standing on their feet all day, setting aside the usable rags, which were later taken to a different part of the factory where the fibers were broken down, bleached, and beaten. The pulp was eventually turned into the brown paper shopkeepers used to wrap everything from butter and tea to pins and sewing needles.

While being a rag girl was dirty work and rumored by some to spread disease, it was one of the few jobs women could get, one Twiggy had been lucky to have.

“You’ll be able to go back again right soon,” Mercy said. “You’ll see.”

Paul gave a disgruntled cry, this one louder than the previous. Twiggy bounced him. “Hush-a-bye now. Guess I can feed you myself this time.”

Twiggy wouldn’t need her to take care of Paul anymore. And she wouldn’t need her to watch over the other little ones or make dinner or stand in line for water.

With her waterpot bumping against her leg and Charity in tow, Mercy followed along as Twiggy made her way through a dark alley to the front of the building. Like the terraced houses in Shoreditch, the Nichol’s homes were just as aged, hardly able to hold themselves up under the weight of the masses who squeezed into every nook.