ty-five dollars a week, but she claimed she lost a great
part of it in winter. She said she was anxious to get on timework. One
afternoon I saw Mrs. Reilly iron just two things--the rest of the
while, nothing to do, she sat on an old stool with her eyes closed.

The first afternoon, Mrs. Reilly edged over to me on pretext of
ironing out a bit of something on my press.

"An' how are you makin' out?"

"All right, only my feet are awful tired. Don't your feet never get
tired?

"Shure, child, an' what good would it do for my feet to get tired when
they're all I got to stand on? An' did you ever try settin' nine hours
a day? Shure an' that would be the death of anybody.

Mrs. Reilly's indoor sport was marrying the sixth floor off. Poor
Lucia's widow's weeds of five weeks were no obstacle to Mrs. Reilly.
She frequently made the whole floor giggle, carrying on an animated
Irish conversation with Lucia over the prospects of a second
marriage--or rather, a monologue it was, since Lucia never knew she
was being talked to. If ever there was a body with a "sex complex it
was old Mrs. Reilly! When I asked her once why she didn't get busy
marrying off herself, she called back: "The Lord be praised! And
didn't I get more than enough of the one man I had?"

At least twice a week Mrs. Reilly saw a ghost, and she would tell us
about it in the morning. She laughed then, and we all laughed, but you
could easily picture the poor old fearful soul meeting that inevitable
2 A.M. guest, quaking over it in her lonely bed. Once the ghost was
extra terrifying. "It may have been the banama sauce," admitted Mrs.
Reilly. And Mrs. Reilly's feet did hurt often. She used sometimes to
take off her worn shoes and try tying her feet up in cardboards.

The other workers on our floor were Mabel and Mary, two colored girls
who finished off slight rough edges in the press ironing and folded
everything; Edna, a Cuban girl who did handkerchiefs on the mangle;
Annie, the English girl, lately married to an American. She had an
inclosure of shelves to work in and there she did the final sorting
and wrapping of family wash. Annie was the most superior person on our
floor.

And Miss Cross. In face, form, neatness, and manners Miss Cross could
have held her own socially anywhere. But according to orthodox
standards Miss Cross's grammar was faulty. She had worked always in
our laundry, beginning as a hand ironer. She knew the days when hours
were longer than