"Only I think"---- "What, child ?" She glanced furtively at him.
"It's a hard, scraping world where such a thing as that has work to do!" He vouchsafed no answer.

She waited to see his lip curl bitterly, and then, amused, went down the stairs.

She had paid him for his sneer.
The steps were but a long ladder set in the wall, not the great staircase used by the hands: that was on the other side of the factory.
It was a huge, unwieldy building, such as crowd the suburbs of trading towns.

This one went round the four sides of a square, with the yard for the vats in the middle.

The ladders and passages she passed down were on the inside, narrow and dimly lighted: she had to grope her way sometimes.