know all the prejudices of polite society, which
smiles at what is esteemed to be a piece of vulgar vanity characteristic
of the working-girl world. And yet I use the term here in all
seriousness, in all good faith; not critically, not playfully, but
tenderly. Because in the humble world in which our comradeship was
formed there is none other to designate the highest type of friendship,
no other phrase to define that affection between girl and girl which is
as the love of sisters. In the great workaday world where we toiled and
hoped and prayed and suffered together for a brief period we were called
"the three lady-friends" by our shop-mates, and such we were to each
other always, and such we shall be throughout the chapter; and I know,
if Bessie and Eunice were here to-night, looking over my shoulder as I
write the account of that sordid little tragedy and the part they played
in it,--I know they would clasp their rough little hands in mine and nod
approval.

Bessie had been my "learner" at Rosenfeld's. I still remember her
exactly as I saw her that first time, a slender little figure bending
over the work-table. Her shirt-waist was snowy-white, and fastened
down--oh, so securely!--under the narrow leather belt; she had a wealth
of straight blonde hair of that clear, transparent quality which, when
heaped high on her head, looked like a mass of spun glass; her cheeks,
which were naturally very pale, burned a deep crimson as they reflected
the light on the poppies beneath; and after a while, when she raised her
head, I saw that her eyes were blue, and that her profile, sharp and
clear cut, was that of a young Jewess. I had thought her to be about
twenty-two,--for, pretty and fresh as she was, she looked every day of
it,--but I found out later that she was not then eighteen.

We had not been long getting acquainted--that is, as well acquainted as
was possible in a busy shop like Rosenfeld's. Indeed, it would be a
strange, sad world--stranger and sadder than it really is--if Bessie and
I had not sooner or later established a certain bond of intimacy.
Sitting opposite at the same work-table, we made poppies together and
exchanged our little stories. She had been working, since she was
fifteen, at all sorts of odd jobs: cash-girl in a department store;
running errands for a fashionable modiste; cashier in a dairy
lunch-room; making picture-frames. This was her second season at
flower-making, and she liked it better than an