e, too,
hurried back to the table and took up our towels and napkins once more.
"There's no mistakin' them signs, and you'd be a little fool if you
wasn't to help him along. Men's all sort of bashful, some more 'n
others, and it's a good thing to help along. I like the looks of that
fellow--he'd be awful silly and soft with his wife."

There was gentle solicitude in the voice, and looking up, I was almost
startled with the radiance of the girl's face--the face of a good woman
who loves, and who takes a generous interest in the love affairs of
another. As we leaned over the truck and began to haul out its wet
freight, she whispered to me:

"I know all about it because I've been there myself. I've got a
gentleman-friend, too, and he's awful nice to me. He's been going with
me five years, and he didn't shake me when I lost my eye. Lots of
fellows I know would have backed out. That's what I like about that
foreman. I think he'd do just the same by a girl he loved as Jim did to
me. We'd have been married this long time, only Jim's got his hands full
with a crazy mother, and he says she'll never go to any asylum s' long's
he's able to keep her; and so Jim's aunt she lives with them and tends
his mother, and it takes 'most all Jim makes, because his mother's sick
all the time, too, and has to have the doctor and be humored. But I like
a man that's good to his mother. Jim isn't overly strong, either, and is
likely to break down."

Late in the afternoon my partner was overcome by an attack of
sick-headache, and dropped with nausea and exhaustion. Mrs. Mooney and
the Queen helped her to her feet.

"It's them pickles and them rotten cold lunches you girls eat," declared
Mrs. Mooney, who was fond of talking on the nutritious properties of
food. "Now I says, the Lord only give me one stummick, and when that's
wore out he'll never give me another, and I can't never buy one with no
money, and I never put anything in that stummick at noon but a good cold
beer and a good hot plate of soup, and that's what you ought to do. Only
cost you five cents for the both of them together, down to Devlin's
place. We go there every day," jerking her head in the direction of her
crony, "and you can go along if ye have a mind to."

In accordance with this invitation, we became patrons of Devlin's the
very next day. Promptly at twelve we hurried out, sleeves still rolled
up and our damp aprons unremoved. There was no time for making a
toilet, Mrs.