The place was like a hive of industry.

Row after row of girls were there, seated side by side, round-shouldered, bending over their machines, looking neither to the right nor to the left, struggling to keep up to time to make sure of the wage which was life or death to them.

It was nothing to them that above the halo of smoke the sky was blue; or that away beyond the murky horizon, the sun, which here in the narrow street seemed to have drawn all life from the air, was shining on yellow cornfields bending before the west wind.

Here there was simply an intolerable heat, a smell of fish and a smell of cloth.
Aaron Thurnbrein crossed the street, entered the unimposing doorway and knocked at the door which led into the busy but unassuming offices.

A small boy threw open a little glass window and looked at him doubtfully.
"I don't know that you can see Miss Thurnbrein even for a minute," he declared, in answer to Aaron's confident enquiry.