two, maybe three, weeks longer.
Besides the assurance of extra pay from this source, Miss Higgins also
intimated, as she conducted me to one of the tables, that if I was "able
to make good" she would raise me to four dollars at the end of the week.

Soon I was "slipping up" poppies under the instruction of Bessie, a
dreamy-eyed young Jewess. The process was simple enough, to watch the
skilled fingers of the other girls, but it was very tedious to my
untried hand. In awkward, self-conscious fashion I began to open out the
crimped wads of scarlet muslin which came to us hot from the
crimping-machine.

"You mustn't smooth the creases out too much," Bessie protested; and
with a deft touch, the right pull here, the proper flattening there, the
muslin scrap blossomed into a fluttering corolla.

"Don't get discouraged. We've all got to learn," one of the girls at
the far end of the table called out cheerily.

"Yes, and don't be afraid of making a mistake," put in my vis-a-vis, a
pretty Italian. "We all make mistakes while we're learning; but you'll
find this a nice place to work, and Miss Higgins is so lovely--she's
awful nice, too, to the new girls."

"Yes, indeed," added Bessie. "It isn't many years since she worked at
the table herself. I've often heard her tell about the first day she
went to work down at Golderberg's."

"That's the worst in town," piped another; "I stayed there just two
days. That was enough for me. Whenever the girls disagree down there,
they step out into the hall and lick each other. First day I was there,
one girl got two ribs broken. Her rival just walked all over her."

"What did they do with the girls?"

"Oh, nothing. They made it all up, and were as sweet as two
turtle-doves, walking around the workroom with their arms around each
other."

"Well, that's what it is to work in those cheap shops," commented Annie
Welshons, of the big blue eyes and yellow hair. "If they ever do get
respectable girls, they won't stay long."

As we worked the conversation ran easily. The talk was in good,
up-to-date English. There was rarely a mispronounced word, or a slip in
grammar; and there was just enough well-selected slang to make the
dialogue bright and to stamp the chatterers as conversant with the live
questions of the day. The topics at all times bespoke clean minds and an
intelligent point of view.

"Are you American born?" Bessie inquired by and by.

The question sounded unusual, almost unne