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 she had taken charge of the management herself. Gradually the factory had been restored to its former prosperity and Kanako had again found it a pleasure to work there.

Everything had been all right until another factory-girl, who was her best friend, had a terrible accident. She had been washing her long hair and as she stood near one of the machines a few strands were caught in the cogwheel. An instant later her hair was being pulled into the machine with a fearful swishing sound. Everyone rushed up to her and someone managed to stop the machine. But it was too late. Just like a piece of lawn that has been torn out of the earth, her hair had been dragged out by its roots and nothing was left but a bleeding scalp. It had of course been the girl’s fault, yet Kanako could not help being tormented by the wretched fate of her friend. The awful groaning of the machinery now made her unbearably nervous and the factory, once so enjoyable, began to strike her as gloomy and oppressive. The owner was generally considered solicitous about her workers; but Kanako now regarded her as a monster and could not bear to look at her. Her friend had returned to her home in the country immediately after the accident. Kanako did not know the details, but she understood that the amount of compensation the girl received from the factory as a result of ruining her entire life had been nothing short of derisory. Yet even this, she was told, was more than the girl would have received torn most other employers. Whatever the truth of the matter might be, Kanako no longer felt like setting foot in the factory.

During the following year she lived at home and helped her mother with the housework. Kanako’s mother was a fierce, dauntless woman who had been brought up in the hinterland and who after many long years had still not been softened by city ways. She was a stubborn old realist and when she was not preparing for the morrow she was making sure that not a grain of today’s rice was being wasted. Even when Kanako sat down to do her sewing she felt her