ou've been here a few years," she said, "you'll make more than I
do. I'm not smart. You'll beat me."

Thus with tact she told me bald truth, and yet had not discouraged!

Novel situations, long walks hither and thither through Lynn, stairs
climbed, and three hours of intense application to work unusual were
tiring indeed. Nevertheless, as I got into my jacket and put on my hat
in the suffocation of the cloak-room I was still under an exhilarating
spell. I belonged, for time never so little, to the giant machine of
which the fifth floor of Parsons' is only an infinitesimal humming,
singing part. I had earned seven cents! Seven cents of the $4,000,000
paid to Lynn shoe employees were mine. I had bought the right to one
piece of bread by the toil of my unskilled labour. As I fastened my
tippet of common black fur and drew on my woolen gloves, the odour from
my glue-and leather-stained hands came pungent to my nostrils. Friends
had said to me: "Your hands will betray you!" If the girls at my side in
Parsons' thought anything about the matter they made no such sign as
they watched my fingers swiftly lose resemblance to those of the leisure
class under the use of instruments and materials damning softness and
beauty from a woman's hands.

Yet Maggie had her sensitiveness on this subject. I remarked once to
her: "I don't see how you manage to keep your hands so clean. Mine are
twice as black." She coloured, was silent for a time, then said: "I
never want anybody to speak to me of my hands. I'm ashamed of 'em; they
used to be real nice, though." She held the blunted ends up. "They're
awful! I do love a nice hand."

The cold struck sharp as a knife as I came out of the factory. Fresh
air, insolent with purity, cleanness, unusedness, smiting nostrils,
sought lungs filled too long with unwholesome atmosphere.[3]

[Footnote 3: At Plant's, Boston, fresh air cylinders ventilate
the shop.]

Heated by a brisk walk home, I climbed the stairs to my attic room, as
cold as Greenland. It was nearly six thirty, supper hour, and I made a
shift at a toilet.

Into the kitchen I was the last comer. All of the supper not on the
table was on the stove, and between this red-hot buffet and the supper
table was just enough room for the landlady to pass to and fro as she
waited upon her nine guests.

No sooner did I open the door into the smoky atmosphere, into the midst
of the little world here assembled, than I felt the quick kindness o