" I moved my chair
as far as possible from the red-hot stove and opened my coat. "He is
too young to be at work. He isn't twelve, is he?"
The indignation I had felt on hearing of Jimmy's bondage to a bench
from seven in the morning to six in the evening, with an interval of
an hour for lunch, was unaccountably disappearing. With helplessness
and incapacity I was not ordinarily patient, and Mrs. Gibbons was an
excellent example of both. Still--"He isn't twelve yet, is he?" I
repeated.
Mrs. Gibbons pushed the little girl, who was trying to get out of the
bed, back in it, and shifted the whimpering baby from one arm to the
other. For a moment she hesitated, looked at me uncertainly.
"No 'm, he ain't but eleven, but I had to tell the mayor that signed
the papers permitting of him to work, that he was twelve. The law
don't let children work lessen they're twelve, and only then if their
mother is a widow and 'ain't got nothing and nobody to do for her. I
don't like to tell a story if I can help it, and them what don't know
nothing 'bout how things is can't understand, and say we oughtn't to
do it.
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