Night Shift

It was one of those nights when the children had gone to bed with little to eat, when she had had to cover the distance from Kitty to Kingston on foot and when the Guard Hut felt colder and more desolate than it customarily did. Nights like this tested Alice Higgins. They made her regret that she had cut her education short, that high unemployment and limited opportunities for underqualified people meant that she was doing the best that was available, that is, if you excluded the opportunity that she had turned down to accept an unspecified position in the ‘gold bush,’ the only assurance having been received from her prospective employer was that her compensation would have been “worth the while.”