ol
of 100, white; a banana for the baby; a new stewpan at the five-and-ten.

There had been a time when Tessie, if she thought of these women at
all, felt sorry for them--worn, drab, lacking in style and figure. Now
she envied them.

There were weeks upon weeks when no letter came from Chuck. In his
last letter there had been some talk of his being sent to Russia.
Tessie's eyes, large enough now in her thin face, distended with a
great fear. Russia! His letter spoke, too, of French villages and
chateaux. He and a bunch of fellows had been introduced to a princess
or a countess or something--it was all one to Tessie--and what do you
think? She had kissed them all on both cheeks! Seems that's the way
they did in France.

The morning after the receipt of this letter the girls at the watch
factory might have remarked her pallor had they not been so occupied
with a new and more absorbing topic.

"Tess, did you hear about Angie Hatton?"

"What about her?"

"She's going to France. It's in the Milwaukee paper, all about her
being Chippewa's fairest daughter, and a picture of the house, and her
being the belle of the Fox River Valley, and she's giving up her
palatial home and all to go to work in a canteen for her country and
bleeding France."

"Ya-as she is!" sneered Tessie, and a dull red flush, so deep as to be
painful, swept over her face from throat to brow. "Ya-as she is, the
doll-faced simp! Why, say, she never wiped up a floor in her life, or
baked a cake, or stood on them feet of hers. She couldn't cut up a
loaf of bread decent. Bleeding France! Ha! That's rich, that is."
She thrust her chin out brutally, and her eyes narrowed to slits.
"She's going over there after that fella of hers. She's chasing him.
It's now or never, and she knows it and she's scared, same's the rest
of us. On'y we got to set home and make the best of it. Or take what's
left." She turned her head slowly to where Nap Ballou stood over a
table at the far end of the room. She laughed a grim, unlovely little
laugh. "I guess when you can't go after what you want, like Angie, why
you gotta take second choice."

All that day, at the bench, she was the reckless, insolent, audacious
Tessie of six months ago. Nap Ballou was always standing over her,
pretending to inspect some bit of work or other, his shoulder brushing
hers. She laughed up at him so that her face was not more than two
inches from his. He flushed, but she did