r and clearer than ever rang Phoebe's soprano "Hot
air!"

The girls lunched in groups of ten and twelve. Each clique had its
leader. By an unwritten law I was included among those who rallied
around Phoebe, most of whom she had "learned" at some time or other, as
she was now "learning" me. The luncheons were divested of their
newspaper wrappings and spread over the ends of tables, on discarded
box-lids held across the knees--in fact, any place convenience or
sociability dictated. Then followed a friendly exchange of pickles and
cake. A dark, swarthy girl, whom they called "Goldy" Courtleigh, was
generous in the distribution of the lukewarm contents of a broken-nosed
tea-pot, which was constantly replenished by application to the
hot-water faucet.

Although we had a half-hour, luncheon was swallowed quickly by most of
the girls, eager to steal away to a sequestered bower among the boxes,
there to lose themselves in paper-backed romance. A few of less literary
taste were content to nibble ice-cream sandwiches and gossip. Dress, the
inevitable masquerade ball, murders and fires, were favorite topics of
discussion,--the last always with lowered voices and deep-drawn
breathing. For fire is the box-maker's terror, the grim specter that
always haunts her, and with good reason does she always start at the
word.

"I'm always afraid," declared Phoebe, "and I always run to the window
and get ready to jump the minute I hear the alarm."

"I don't," mused Angelina; "I haven't sense enough to jump: I faint dead
away. There'd be no chance for me if a fire ever broke out here."

Once or twice there was mention of beaux and "steady fellows," but the
flesh-and-blood man of every-day life did not receive as much attention
in this lunch chat as did the heroes of the story-books.

While it was evident, of course, from scattered comments that box-makers
are constantly marrying, it was likewise apparent that they have not
sufficient imagination to invest their hard-working, sweat-grimed
sweethearts with any halo of romance.

Promptly at half-past twelve the awakening machinery called us back to
the workaday world. Story-books were tucked away, and their entranced
readers dragged themselves back to the machines and steaming paste-pots,
to dream and to talk as they worked, hot of their own fellows of last
night's masquerade, but of bankers and mill-owners who in fiction have
wooed and won and honorably wedded just such poor toilers as th