u hadn't
been here any longer," retorted Ellen.

"I did, too; you can't depend on a thing Ed Flynn says. You're awful
slow. He praises you because you are good-lookin'."

Ellen turned and faced her. "Look here," said she.

The other girl looked at her with unspeakable impudence, and yet
under it was that shadow of dejection and that irresponsible
childishness.

"Well, I am lookin'," said she, "what is it?"

"You need not speak to me again in that way," said Ellen, "and I
want you to understand it. I will not have it."

"My, ain't you awful smart," said the other girl, sneeringly, but
she went on with her work without another word. Presently she said
to Ellen, kindly enough: "If you lay the shoes the way I do, so, you
can get them faster. You'll find it pays. Every little saving of
time counts when you are workin' by the piece."

"Thank you," said Ellen, and did as she was instructed. She began to
work with exceeding swiftness for a beginner. Her fingers were
supple, her nervous energy great. Flynn came and stood beside her,
watching her.

"If you work at that rate, you'll make it pretty profitable," he
said.

"Thank you," said Ellen.

"And a square knot every time," he added, with almost a caressing
inflection. Mamie Brady tied in the twine with compressed lips.
Granville Joy passed them, pushing a rack full of shoes to another
department, and he glanced at them jealously. Still he was not
seriously alarmed as to Flynn, who, although he was good-looking,
was a Catholic. Mrs. Zelotes seemed an effectual barrier to that.

"Ed Flynn talks that way to everybody," Mamie Brady said to Ellen,
after the foreman had passed on. She said it this time quite
inoffensively. Ellen laughed.

"If I _do_ tie the knots square, that is the main thing," she said.

"Then you don't like him?"

"I never spoke two words to him before the day I applied for work,"
Ellen replied, haughtily. She was beginning to feel that perhaps the
worst feature of her going to work in a factory would be this girl.

"I've known girls who would be willing to go down on their knees and
tie his shoes when they hadn't seen more of him than that," said the
girl. "Ed Flynn is an awful masher."

Ellen went on with her work. The girl, after a side glance at her,
went on with hers.

Gradually Ellen's work began to seem mechanical. At first she had
felt as if she were tying all her problems of life in square knots.
She had to use all her brain upon