't any men work in this place except the foreman?" I asked Mrs.
Mooney, who had toiled a long time in the "Pearl" and knew everything.

"Love of Mary!" she exclaimed indignantly; "and d' ye think any white
man that called hisself a white man would work in sich a place as this,
and with naygurs?"

"But we work here," I argued.

"Well, we be wimmin," she declared, drawing a pinch of snuff into her
nostrils in a manner that indicated finality.

"But if it isn't good enough for a man, it isn't good enough for us,
even if we are women!" I persisted.

She looked at me half in astonishment, half in suspicion at my daring to
question the time-honored order of things. Economics could make no
appeal to her intelligence, and shooting a glance out of her hard old
black eyes, she replied with a logic that permitted no gainsaying.

"Love of Mary! if yez don't like yer job, ye can git out. Sure and we
don't take on no airs around here!"

At twelve the noise ceased, and a shrill whistle ushered in the
half-hour's respite. The effect of that raucous shriek was as solemn, as
awe-inspiring, for the first moment, as the ringing of the Angelus bell
in a Catholic country-side. For one moment everybody stood motionless
and mute, the women with arms akimbo on aching hips, the black washers
with drooping, relaxed shoulders. Each tortured frame seemed to heave
with an inaudible "Thank God!" and then we slowly scattered in all
directions--some to the cloak-room, where the lunches were stored along
with the wraps, some down the stairs into the street.

On this day the one-eyed girl and I found a bundle of clothes large
enough for two to sit on, and shared our lunch. For half a ham sandwich
she gave me a piece of cold sausage, and I gave her a dill pickle for a
greasy doughnut. The inevitable bottle of "pop" neither of us was able
to open until the foreman came along and lent his assistance. He
lingered a moment to talk the usual inanities that pass between a
democratic foreman and a couple of new girls. Under his jovial exterior
there seemed to be a vein of seriousness, amounting almost to sadness
when one looked at his well-modeled face and his steady gray eyes. Tall
and pale and prematurely bent, he had a certain distinction, as if he
had been cut out for better things. His manner had lost all the easy
familiarity of a few hours before, and he asked us in the kindest tone
possible how we liked the work, and heartened us with the assuranc