After that, even when a letter came from the lawyers who were looking after the case, holding out hope, and always asking for money, and Rucker for a day or so was quite chipper and affectionate to my mother in a sickening sort of sneaking way, her spirits never rose so far as I could see.

I suppose she was what might be called a broken-hearted woman.
This went on until I was thirteen years old.

I was little and not very strong, and had a cough, caused, perhaps, by the hard steady work, and the lint in the air of the factory.

There were a good many cases every year of the working people there going into declines and dying of consumption; so my mother had taken me out of the factory every time Rucker went away, and tried to make me play.

It was so in all the factories in those days, I guess.