frequent pinches of snuff and
chunks of coffee-cake which they drew from inexhaustible pockets. My
attempts at conversation with these two having been met with chilling
silence, and as Mrs. Mooney had given me several painful thrusts with
her sharp elbow when I happened to get too close to her, I took care to
keep a safe distance, puzzled as to wherein I might have offended, and
lapsing into a morbid interest in the gossip flying thick and fast
around me.

The target of scandal was "the queen," a big, handsome blonde girl of
about twenty-five, who in a different environment and properly corseted
and gowned would have been set down unquestionably as "a voluptuous
beauty." Here in the laundry, in stocking-feet and an unbelted black
shirt-waist turned far in at the neck, she was merely "mushy," to use
the adjective of her detractors. The queen owed her nickname to the
boss, with whom she was said to "stand in," being "awful soft after
him." She was a sort of assistant to the foreman, bossing the job when
he was not around, and lending a hand in rush hours with true democratic
simplicity such as only the consciousness of her prestige could warrant
her in doing. Now she was assisting the black men load a truck, now
helping a couple of girls push it across the floor, now helping us dump
it on the table--laughing and joking all the while, but at the same time
goading us on to the very limit of human endurance. She had been in the
"Pearl" for seven years, slaved harder than any of us, and she looked as
fresh and buoyant as if she never had known what work was. I rather
liked the queen, despite the fact that I detected in her immediately a
relentless task-master; everybody else seemed to like her,
notwithstanding the malicious things they said about her.

"Tired?" asked the one-eyed girl. "Yes, it's hard work, but it's steady.
You're never out of a job if you're a steady shaker that can be relied
on."

There was cheerfulness in her tone, and both the old women stopped
talking.

"Did yez come in the barber's wagon?" Mrs. Mooney asked. On being
assured that we had not, she proceeded to establish amicable relations
with the one-eyed girl and me by telling us she was glad we "weren't
Ginnies, anyway."

"Whatever happened to yer eye?" inquired the other crone of my
companion.

Unresentful of the blunt inquisitiveness, the girl responded cordially
with her little story--glad, apparently, to have a listener.

"It was somethin