-friends in the factory
if you're going to be queer like that."

"But I walk as I always did. How else should I walk? How do I walk that
makes me so funny?" I asked, mortified at the thought of my having been
the butt of secret ridicule. Henrietta was cordial in her reply.

"You walk too light," she explained; "you don't seem to touch the ground
at all when you go along, and you stand so straight it makes my back
ache to watch you."

Then my mentor proceeded to correct my use and choice of diction.

"And what makes you say 'lid' when you mean a cover? Why, it just about
kills us girls to hear you say 'lid.'"

"But," I remonstrated, aggravated by her silly "tee-hee" into defense of
my English, "why shouldn't I say 'lid' if I want to? It means just the
same as cover."

"Well, if it mean the same, why don't you say 'cover'?" my "learner"
retorted, with ill-disguised anger that I should question her authority;
and I dropped the subject, and the remainder of the walk was continued
in silence.

It was growing more and more apparent that I had not made a wise
selection in my room-mate, but it seemed too late to back out now--at
least until I had given her a trial of several days.

I felt as though I had obtained, as if by magic, a wonderfully
illuminating insight into her nature and character during this short
walk from the factory. I had thought her at the work-table a
kind-hearted, honest toiler, a bit too visionary, perhaps, to accord
with perfect veracity, and woefully ignorant, but with an ignorance for
which I could feel nothing but sorrow and sympathy, as the inevitable
result of the hard conditions of her life and environment. But now I
recognized with considerable foreboding, not only all this, but much
more besides. Henrietta Manners, that humble, under-fed, miserable
box-maker, was the very incarnation of bigotry and intolerance, one by
whom any idea, or any act, word, or occurrence out of the ordinary rut
set by box-factory canons of taste and judgment, must be condemned with
despotic severity. And yet, in the face of all these unpleasant
reflections upon poor Henrietta's unbeautiful mental characteristics, I
felt a certain shamefaced gratitude toward the kind heart which I knew
still beat under that shabby golf-cape.

Meanwhile, Henrietta had again lapsed into a silent, sullen mood, as she
pitched along in the nervous, jerky, heavy-footed gait which she had
urged me to emulate, and which I thought so hi