or. Often she was late. Sometimes Miss Cross
would grow desperate--but there Irma remained. Below, in that little
entryway, were girls waiting for jobs. Did they figure that on the
whole Irma wrecked fewer garments than the average new girl, or what?
And the manager had tried to scare me!

The noon bell rings--we dash for the lunch-room line. You can purchase
pies and soup and fruit, hash and stew, coffee and tea, cafeteria
style. There are only two women to serve--the girls from the lower
floors have to stand long in line. I do not know where to sit, and by
mistake evidently get at a wrong table. No one talks to me. I surely
feel I am not where I belong. The next day I get at another wrong
table. It is so very evident I am not wanted where I am. Rather
disconcerting. I sit and ponder. I had thought factory girls so much
more friendly to one another on short acquaintance than "cultured"
people. But it is merely that they are more natural. When they feel
friendly they show it with no reserves. When they do not feel friendly
they show that without reserve. Which is where the unnaturalness of
"cultured" folk sometimes helps.

It seems etee-quette at the laundry requires each girl sit at the
table where her floor sits. That second day I was at the
shirt-and-collar table, and they, I was afterward told, are
particularly exclusive. Indeed they are.

At 12.45 the second bell rings. Miss Cross calls out, "All right,
girls!" Clank, the presses begin again, and all afternoon I iron
gentlemen's underpinnings. During the course of my days in the laundry
I iron three sets round for every man in New York and thereby acquire
a domestic attitude toward the entire male sex in the radius sending
wash to our laundry. Nobody loves a fat man. But their underclothes do
fit more easily over the press.

I iron and I iron and I iron, and along about 4.30 the first afternoon
it occurs to my cynical soul to wonder what the women are doing with
themselves with the spare time which is theirs, because I am thumping
that press down eight hours and fifty minutes a day. Not that it is
any of my business.

Also along about five o'clock it irritates me to have to bother with
what seems to me futile work. I am perfectly willing to take great
pains with a white waistcoat--in one day I learn to make a work of art
of that. But why need one fuss over the back of a nightshirt? Will a
man sleep any better for a wrinkle more or less? Besides, so soon it
i