h. Can't you wait?"

Just then the boss stepped from the elevator. "_Ach_, here you are!
Now, dearie, if it's just a matter of a few dollars or so--"

I was leaving town. Much discussion. No, I couldn't stay on. Well, if
I insisted--yes, he'd get my pay envelope. My, oh, my, they missed me!
Why so foolish as to leave New York? Now, as for my wages, they could
easily be fixed to suit.... All right, all right, he'd get my last pay
envelope.

And there was my pay envelope with just twelve dollars again. "What
about my overtime?"

Overtime? Who said anything about overtime? He did himself. He'd
promised me if I worked every night that week late I'd get paid for
it. Every single night I had stayed, and where was my pay for it?

He shook his finger at my time card.

Show him one hour of overtime on that card!

I showed him where every night the time clock registered overtime.

Yes, but not once was it a full hour. And didn't I know overtime
never counted unless it was at least a full hour?

No, he had never explained anything about that. I'd worked each night
until everything was done and I'd been told I could go.

Well, of course he didn't want to rob me. I really had nothing coming
to me. Each night I'd stayed on till about 6. But they would figure it
out and see what they could pay me. They figured. I waited. At length
majestically he handed out fifty-six cents.

* * * * *

The fat, older brother in the firm rode down in the elevator with
me--he who used to move silently around the factory about four times a
day, squinting out of his beady eyes, such light as shown there
bespeaking 100 per-cent possession. He held his fat thumbs in the
palms of his fat hands and benignly he was wont to survey his realm.
Mine! Mine! Mine! his every inch of being said. Nor could his
proportion of joy have been greater if he had six floors of his own to
survey, instead of one little claptrap back room. It did make him so
happy. He wore a kindly and never-changing expression, and he never
spoke.

Going down in the elevator, he edged over to my corner. He pinched my
arm, he pinched my cheeks. _Ach_, but he'd miss me bad. Nice girl, I
was.

Evidently he, too, had evolved a moral equivalent for a living wage.
Little kindly personal attentions were his share for anything not
adequately covered by twelve dollars and fifty-six cents.

V