been a presser long at the shoe-shops?"

"No."

"I like your pluck. When a girl has never had to work, and takes hold
the way you do, I admire it. You will get along all right."

"Thank you; perhaps I won't, though."

"Now, don't get nervous. I am nervous myself," he said; "I know how that
is."

On his next visit he asked me: "Where you goin'; to when you get out of
here to-night?"

I told him that I was all right--that I had a place to stay.

"If you're hard up, don't get discouraged; come to me."

[Illustration: "FANCY GUMMING."

Mrs. T earns $8 or $9 a week. Her husband also works in a factory, and
between them they have made enough to build a pretty little cottage]

[Illustration: AN ALL-AROUND, EXPERIENCED HAND.

Mrs. F., who has worked in the factory more than twenty years, once as
a forewoman, now earns only $5 or $6 a week]

I thanked him again and said that I could not take charity.

"Nonsense! I don't call it charity! If I was hard put, don't you s'pose
I'd go to the next man if he offered me what I offer you? The world owes
you a livin'."

When the foreman had left me I turned to look at "Bobby." She was in the
act of lifting to her lips a glass of what was supposed to be water.

"You're not going to drink that!" I gasped, horrified. "Where did you
get it?"

"Oh, I drawed it awhile ago," she said.

It had stood gathering microbes in the room, visible ones evidently, for
a scum had formed on the glass that looked like stagnant oil. She blew
the stuff back and drank long. Her accent was so bad and her English so
limited I took her to be a foreigner beyond doubt. She proved to be an
American. She had worked in factories all her life, since she was eight
years old, and her brain was stunted.

At dinner time, when I left Marches', I had stood, without sitting down
once, for five hours, and according to Bobby's computation I had made
the large sum of twenty-five cents, having cleaned a little more than
one hundred shoes. To all intents, at least for the moment, my hands
were ruined. At Weyman's restaurant I went in with my fellow workwomen
and men.

Weyman's restaurant smells very like the steerage in a vessel. The top
floor having burned out a few weeks before, the ceiling remained
blackened and filthy. The place was so close and foul-smelling that
eating was an ordeal. If I had not been so famished, it would have been
impossible for me to swallow a mouthful. I bought soup and beans, and
a