e curtains or do furniture covers, had a great set-to on the
subject of religion. Jacobs was an iconoclast. Edna left her
handkerchiefs to join in. I eavesdropped visibly. Jacobs 'lowed there
was no hell. Whereat Miss Cross and Edna wanted to know the sense of
being good. Jacobs 'lowed there was no such thing as a soul. Miss
Cross and Edna fairly clutched each other.

"Then what is there that makes you happy or unhappy, if it ain't your
soul?" asked Miss Cross, clenchingly.

"Oh, hell!" grunted Jacobs, impatiently, after having just argued
there was no such place.

Jacobs uttered much heresy. Miss Cross and Edna perspired in anguish.
Then I openly joined the group.

Miss Cross turned to me. "I tell you how I feel about Christianity. If
a lot of these educated college professors and lawyers and people
like that, when they read all the books they do and are smart as they
are--if Christianity is good enough for them, it's good enough for
me!"

Jacobs was so disgusted that he left.

Whereat Edna freed her soul of all the things she wanted to say about
hell and punishment for sins. She went too far for Miss Cross. Edna
spoke of thieves and murderers and evildoers in general, and what they
ought to get in both this world and the next. Quite a group had
collected by this time.

Then Miss Cross turned to us all and said: "We're in no position to
pass judgment on people that do wrong. Look at us. Here we are, girls
what have everything. We got nice homes, enough to eat and wear, we
have 'most everything in the world we want. We don't know what it's
like to be tempted, 'cause we're so fortunate. An' I say we shouldn't
talk about people who go wrong."

That--in a laundry.

And only Edna seemed not to agree.

* * * * *

To-day at lunch the subject got around to matrimony. Eleanor said:
"Any girl can get married, if she wants to so bad she'll take any old
thing, but who wants to take any old thing?"

"Sure," I added, cockily. "Who wants to pick up with anyone they can
vamp in the Subway?"

Whereupon I get sat upon and the line of argument was interesting.
Thus it ran:

After all, why wasn't a man a girl vamped in the Subway the safest
kind? Where did working girls get a chance to meet men, anyhow? About
the only place was the dance hall, and goodness knows what kind of men
you did meet at a dance hall. They were apt to be the kind to make
questionable husbands; like as not they were