Arrange the matter with Pfeifer.
[_He escapes into the office._
[_The supplicants look helplessly at one another, sigh, and take
their places again among the others._
PFEIFER
[_Resuming his task of inspection._] Well, Annie, let as see what yours
is like.
OLD BAUMERT
How much is we to get for the web, then, Mr. Pfeifer?
PFEIFER
One shilling a web.
OLD BAUMERT
Has it come to that!
[_Excited whispering and murmuring among the weavers._
END OF THE FIRST ACT
THE SECOND ACT
_A small room in the house of WILHELM ANSORGE, weaver and cottager in
the village of Kaschbach, in the Eulengebirge._
_In this room, which does not measure six feet from the dilapidated
wooden floor to the smoke-blackened rafters, sit four people. Two
young girls, EMMA and BERTHA BAUMERT, are working at their looms;
MOTHER BAUMERT, a decrepit old woman, sits on a stool beside the bed,
with a winding-wheel in front of her; her idiot son AUGUST sits on a
foot-stool, also winding. He is twenty, has a small body and head,
and long, spider-like legs and arms._
_Faint, rosy evening light makes its way through two small windows in
the right wall, which have their broken panes pasted over with paper
or stuffed with straw.
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