They are fairly affectionate, but anxious how the thing they have to do may go--hope only she may permit them to leave her there behind quietly.

And the poor old soul is excited by the noise made by the children, and partly aware of what is going to happen with her.

She too begins to count--one, two, three, five--on her trembling fingers, misshapen by a life of toil.
[176] 'Yes! yes! and twice five make ten'-- they say, to pacify her.

It is her last appeal to be taken home again; her proof that all is not yet up with her; that she is, at all events, still as capable as those joyous children.
"At the baths, a party of labourers are at work upon one of the great brick furnaces, in a cloud of black dust.

A frail young child has brought food for one of them, and sits apart, waiting till his father comes--watching the labour, but with a sorrowful distaste for the din and dirt.