own coat over the
blue-checked apron, chewing a stick of Black Jack, hung over the
railing and for five whole minutes and watched the men on the steel
skeleton. All the time my salary was going on just the same.

I was hoping the boss would tip me--say, a dime--for running his
errands. Otherwise I might never get a tip from anyone. He did not. He
thanked me, and after that he called me "dearie."

Ada's face wore an anxious look when I got back. She was afraid I
might not have liked running errands. Running errands, it seemed, was
not exactly popular. I assured her it was "so swell watchin' the
riveters on the new buildin'" I didn't care about the shoes.

The first day in any new job seems strange, and you wonder if you ever
will get acquainted. In the dress factory I felt that way for several
days. Hitherto I had always worked with girls all round me, and it was
no time before we were chatting back and forth. In the dress factory I
worked by myself at chores no one else did. Also, the other girls had
the sort of jobs which took concentration and attention--there was
comparatively little talk. Also, the sewing machines inside and the
riveting on that steel building outside made too much noise for easy
conversation.

At lunch time most of the girls went out to eat at various restaurants
round about. They looked so grand when they got their coats and hats
on that I could never see them letting me tag along in my old green
tam and two-out-of-five buttoned coat. My wardrobe had all fitted in
appropriately to candy and brass and the laundry, but not to
dressmaking. So I ate my lunch out of a paper bag in the factory with
such girls as stayed behind. They were mostly the beaders. And they
were mostly "dead ones"--the sort who would not talk had they been
given a bonus and share in the profits for it. They read the _Daily
News_, a group of some five to one paper, and ate.

By Thursday of the first week I was desperate. How was I ever to "get
next" to the dress factory girls? During the lunch hour Friday I
gulped down my food and tore for Gimbel's, where I bought five new
buttons. Saturday I sewed them on my coat, and Monday and all the next
week I ate lunch with Ada and Eva and Jean and Kate at a Yiddish
restaurant where the food had strange names and stranger tastes. But
at least there was conversation.

Ada I loved--our forelady in the bead work--young, good-looking,
intelligent. She rather took me under her wing, in g