ned to me, while the now silent wranglers meekly
turned their keys in the register and marched up-stairs, whither their
respective factions had since disappeared.

"I do hope to goodness you ain't high-tempered like some is," she
remarked, with an effort toward affability, as we stepped before the
time-register, where I inserted my key for the first time. "All I got to
say is, don't get into no fights with the girls. When they say things to
you, don't talk back. It's them that just takes things as they come, and
lets bygones be bygones, that get the good checks at the end of the
week. Some of them fight more 'n they work, but I guess you won't be
that kind," she concluded, with an unctuous smile, displaying two rows
of false teeth. Then, with a quick, nervous, jerky gait, she hopped up
the flight of rough plank stairs, threw open a door, and ushered me into
the bedlam noises of the "loft," where, amid the roar of machinery and
the hum of innumerable voices, I was to meet my prospective forewoman.

"Miss Kinzer! Here's a lady wants to learn," shrilled the high nasal
voice. "Miss Kinzer! Where's Miss Kinzer? Oh, here you are!" as a young
woman emerged from behind a pile of pasteboard boxes. "I've a learner
for you, Miss Kinzer. She's a green girl, but she looks likely, and I
want you to give her a good chance. Better put her on table-work to
begin with." And with that injunction the little old maid hopped away,
leaving me to the scrutiny and cross-questioning of a rather pretty
woman of twenty-eight or thirty.

"Ever worked in a factory before?" she began, with lofty indifference,
as if it didn't matter whether I had or had not.

"No."

"Where did you work?"

"I never worked any place before."

"Oh-h!" There was a world of meaning, as I afterward discovered, in Miss
Kinzer's long-drawn-out "Oh-h!" In this instance she looked up quickly,
with an obvious display of interest, as if she had just unearthed a
remarkable specimen in one who had never worked at anything before.

"You're not used to work, then?" she remarked insinuatingly,
straightening up from the rude desk where she sat like the judge of a
police-court. She was now all attention.

"Well, not exactly that," I replied, nettled by her manner and, above
all, by her way of putting things. "I have worked before, but never at
factory-work."

"Then why didn't you say so?"

She now opened her book and inscribed my name therein.

"Where do you live?"

"Ov