s. There's gas and electric light
both, but there isn't a breath of air, and it's so hot that after an
hour or two your head feels baked and your eyes as if they would fall
out. The dull season--that's from spring to fall--lasts six months, and
then we work nine and a half hours and Saturdays thirteen. The other six
months we work eleven hours, and holiday time till ten and eleven. I'm
strong. I'm an old hand and somehow stand things, but I've a cousin at
the ribbon counter, the very best girl in the world, I do believe. She
always makes the best of things, but this year it did seem as if the
whole town was at that counter. They stood four and five deep. She was
penned in with the other girls, a dozen or two, with drawers and cases
behind and counter in front, and there she stood from eight in the
morning till ten at night, with half an hour off for dinner and for
supper. She could have got through even that, but you see there has to
be steady passing in that narrow space, and she was knocked and pushed,
first by one and then by another, till she was sore all over; and at
last down she dropped right there, not fainting, but sort of gone, and
the doctor says she's most dead and can't go back, he doesn't know when.
Down there in the basement the girls have to put on blue glasses, the
glare is so dreadful, but they don't like to have us. The only comfort
is you're with a lot and don't feel lonesome. I can't bear to do
anything alone, no matter what it is."

A girl with clear dark eyes and a face that might have been almost
beautiful but for its haggard, worn-out expression, turned from the
table where she had been writing and smiled as she looked at the last
speaker.

"That is because you happen to be made that way," she said. "I am always
happier when I can be alone a good deal, but of course that's never
possible, or almost never. I shall want the first thousand years of my
heaven quite to myself, just for pure rest and a chance to think."

"I don't know anything about heaven," the last speaker said hastily,
"but I'm sure I hope there's purgatory at least for some of the people
I've had to submit to. I think a woman manager is worse than a man. I've
never had trouble anywhere and always stay right on, but I've wanted to
knock some of the managers down, and it ought to have been done. Just
take the new superintendent. We loved the old one, but this one came in
when she died, and one of the first things she did was to di