ompanions volunteer a word of themselves.

"I was out to a ball last night," the youngest one says. "I stayed so
late I didn't feel a bit like getting up this morning."

"That's nothing," another retorts. "There's hardly an evening we don't
have company at the house, music or somethin'; I never get enough rest."

And on my second trip the pale creature with me says:

"I'm in deep mourning. My mother died last Friday week. It's awful
lonely without her. Seems as though I'd never get over missing her. I
miss her _dreadful_. Perhaps by and by I'll get used to it."

"Oh, no, you won't," the answer comes from a girl with short skirts.
"You'll never get used to it. My ma's been dead eight years next month
and I dreamt about her all last night. I can't get her out o' me mind."

Born into dirt and ugliness, disfigured by effort, they have the same
heritage as we: joys and sorrows, grief and laughter. With them as with
us gaiety is up to its old tricks, tempting from graver rivals, making
duty an alien. Grief is doing her ugly work: hollowing round cheeks,
blackening bright eyes, putting her weight of leaden loneliness in
hearts heretofore light with youth.

When I have fitted 110 dozen tin caps the forewoman comes and changes my
job. She tells me to haul and load up some heavy crates with pickle
jars. I am wheeling these back and forth when the twelve o'clock whistle
blows. Up to that time the room has been one big dynamo, each girl a
part of it. With the first moan of the noon signal the dynamo comes to
life. It is hungry; it has friends and favourites--news to tell. We herd
down to a big dining-room and take our places, five hundred of us in
all. The newspaper bundles are unfolded. The menu varies little: bread
and jam, cake and pickles, occasionally a sausage, a bit of cheese or a
piece of stringy cold meat. In ten minutes the repast is over. The
dynamo has been fed; there are twenty minutes of leisure spent in
dancing, singing, resting, and conversing chiefly about young men and
"sociables."

At 12:30 sharp the whistle draws back the life it has given. I return to
my job. My shoulders are beginning to ache. My hands are stiff, my
thumbs almost blistered. The enthusiasm I had felt is giving way to a
numbing weariness. I look at my companions now in amazement. How can
they keep on so steadily, so swiftly? Cases are emptied and refilled;
bottles are labeled, stamped and rolled away; jars are washed, wiped and
loaded, a