"_Discharged_, Angie? I thought you were doing so well----” "Discharged nothing! I quit." "But what in the world---- It was a good job, wasn’t it? You said it was." A sudden and vivid expression of disgust lit up her child’s face. "My Gawd, mommer! I got so _sick_ of it! Sitting at that machine, all day and every day. Those girls--and the fellers! So blame sick of it, mommer! _I_ don’t know--I got thinking. It seems to me maybe I could do better somewhere else." "They’re all about the same, I guess--those factories. I can’t see what good it’ll do you to be changing so often, Angelica. The girls are all the same; unless maybe you could get into one of the big stores, and they don’t pay near as much." "What’s the good of that? Just as bad. No, mommer, I want--something different. Oh, mommer, I want to get something _out_ of life!" Her mother looked at her in silence. She comprehended her perfectly. Hadn’t she been like that herself long, long ago--restless, hungry for life, forever seeking something new? Not, of course, in this foreign and vehement way. She had never been capable of speaking so crudely, so violently, as her child; but though they hadn’t a feature, a gesture, an intonation alike, they partook of the same indomitable spirit. "_I_ know!" she said. "It’s hard--terrible hard; but it’s only worse if you’re always fighting against it. There’s no chance for people like us, and we’ve got to put up with it. We can’t get what we want. Whatever kind of work you choose, it’ll be just as hard." Angelica, her head in her hands, was looking straight before her. "I don’t see," she began, "why I shouldn’t _try_, anyway, to go up instead of down." "There’s no call to go down," said her mother; "but you’ll find it hard enough just to keep the same. You’ve got to be--well, Angelica, as my mother used to say she’d been taught in the old country--you’ve got to be contented to stay in the station where it has pleased God to put you." "God made a mistake, then. He’s put me in the wrong station, and I won’t stay in it. And anyway, mommer, haven’t you ever thought? We’re not staying--we’re going down, down, all the time. You’re not where your mother was, and I’m not where you used to be." "You’ve got more brains than me, and----” "I’m not talking about brains. You’re _better_ than me; you talk better, and you’ve got nicer ways. You’re----” She flushed a little. "You’re more like a--lady than me."