ate the
sight of faces an' wish myself on top of the hill in the cobble-stones,
but it did, an' it does now sometimes.

"I went on board the boat that night sort of crazy. I'd gone an' got
some sandwiches an' things at a place the conductor told me, an' I sat
on the deck in the moonlight an' ate my supper. I'd been too happy to
eat before, an' I was so happy then I could hardly keep still. There was
a girl not far off, a kind of nice-looking girl, an' she watched me, an'
at last she began to talk. In half an hour I knew all about her an' she
about me. She was a Rhode Island girl an' had worked in a mill near
Providence, an' gone to New York at last an' learned fur-sewing. She
said it was a good trade, an' she made ten an' twelve dollars a week
while the season lasted an' never less than five. This seemed a mint of
money, an' when she said one of their old hands had died, an' she could
take me right in as her friend an' teach me herself, I felt as if my
fortune was made.

"Well, I went with her next day. She had a room in Spring Street, near
Hudson,--an old-fashioned house that belonged to two maiden sisters, an'
I went in with her the first night, an' afterward for a while had the
hall bedroom. It didn't take me long to learn. It was a Jew place an'
there were thirty girls, but he treated us well. For my part I've fared
just as well with Jews as ever I did with Christians, an' sometimes
better. I'd taken to Hattie so that I couldn't bear to think of leaving
her, an' so I let my dressmaking plan go. But I'll tell you what I found
out in time. These skins are all dressed with arsenic. The dealers say
there's nothing poisonous about them, but of course they lie. Every pelt
has more or less in it, an' the girls show it just as the
artificial-flower girls show it. Your eyelids get red an' the lids all
puffy, an' you're white as chalk. The dealers say the red eyes come from
the flying hairs. Perhaps they do, but the lids don't, an' every
fur-sewer is poisoned a little with every prick of her needle. What the
flying hair does is just to get into your throat an' nose and
everywhere, an' tickle till you cough all the time, an' a girl with weak
lungs hasn't a chance. The air is full of fur, an' then the work-room is
kept tight shut for fear of moths getting in. The work is easy enough.
It's just an everlasting patchwork, for you're always sewing together
little bits, hundreds of them, that you have to match. You sew over an'
ov