collapse from sheer fatigue, at the dinner hour I
went to a restaurant and ordered a meal in keeping with my appetite. I
had never been so hungry. I almost wept with joy when the chicken and
cranberry and potato appeared. Never was sauce more poignant than that
which seasoned the only real repast I had in Lynn.

The hours, from one to three went fairly well, but by 3:30 I was tired
out, my fingers had grown wooden with fatigue, glue-pot and
folding-line, board, hammer and awl had grown indistinct. It was hard-to
continue. The air stifled. Odours conspired together. Oil, leather, glue
(oh, that to-heaven-smelling glue!), tobacco smoke, humanity.

* * * * *

Maggie asked me, "How old do I look?" I gave her thirty. Twenty-five it
seemed she was. In guessing the next girl's age no better luck. "It's
this," Maggie nodded to the workroom; "it takes it out of you! Just you
wait till you've worked ten years in Lynn."

Ten years! Heaven forbid! Already I could have rushed from the factory,
shaken its dust from my feet, and with hands over ears shut out the
horrid din that inexorably cried louder than human speech.

Everything we said was shrieked in the friendly ear bent close.

Although Maggie McGowan was curious about me, in posing her questions
she was courtesy itself.

"Say," to her neighbour, "where do you think Miss Ballard's from?
Paris!"

My neighbour once-removed leaned forward to stare at me. "My, but that's
a change to Lynn! Ain't it? Now don't you think you'll miss it?"

She fell to work again, and said after a little: "Paris! Why, that's
like a dream. Is it like real places? I can't never guess what it is
like!"

The girl at the machine next mine had an ear like a sea-shell, a skin of
satin. Her youth was bound, strong shoulders already stooped, chest fast
narrowing. At 7 A.M. she came: albeit fresh, pale still and wan; rest of
the night too short a preparation for the day's work. By three in the
afternoon she was flushed, by five crimson. She threw her hands up over
her head and exclaimed: "My back's broke, and I've only made thirty-five
cents to-day."

Maggie McGowan (indicating me): "Here's a girl who's had the misfortune
never to work in a shoe-shop."

"_Misfortune?_ You don't mean that!"

Maggie: "Well, I guess I don't! If I didn't make a joke now and then I'd
jump into the river!"

She sat close to me patiently directing my clumsy fingers.

"Why do you speak s