he
matter came to Hap's notice. He lined the four of them up and, while
the whole room looked on with amused interest, he told them what was
what. After that they stayed till 12.

Another time a piece-rate girl allowed herself to be overpaid two
dollars and said nothing about it. Hap called her into the office.

"Didn't you get too much in your envelope this week?"

"I dunno. I 'ain't figured up yet."

"Don't you keep track of your own work?"

"Yes, but I 'ain't figured up yet."

"Bring me your card."

The girl reddened and produced a card with everything up to date and
two dollars below the amount in her pay envelope.

"You better take a week off," said Hap. But he repented later in the
afternoon and took it back, only he told her to be more careful.

It was the bundler who took me under her wing that first day--pretty
Mamie O'Brien--three generations in the Falls. There was no talk of
vamping, no discussions of beaus. Everyone told everything she had
done since Saturday noon.

"Hey, Margaret, didjagototha movies Saturday night?"

"Sure. Swell, wasn't it?"

"You said it. I 'ain't ever saw sweller...."

"I seen Edna's baby Sunday. Awful cute. Had on them pink shoes Amy
made it...."

"Say, ain't that awful about Mr. Tinney's grandchild over to
Welkville! Only lived three hours...."

"They're puttin' in the bathtub at Owenses'...."

"What dya know! After they got the bathroom all papered at Chases'
they found they'd made a mistake and it's all got to be ripped down.
Bathtub won't fit in." ("Improvements" were one of the leading topics
of conversation day in and day out at the Falls.)

"Ain't that new hat of Jess Tufts a fright? I 'ain't never saw her
look worse."

Back and forth it went--all the small gossip of the small town where
everyone knows everything about everyone else from start to finish. It
was all a bit too mild for Mamie, as I later learned--indeed, I began
to learn it that day. It was no time before Mamie was asking my
opinion on every detail of the Stillman case: Did I think Mrs. Stokes
would get her divorce? Did I consider somebody or other guilty of some
crime or other? Somebody gets the electric chair to-morrow? Wasn't it
the strangest thing that somebody's body hadn't been recovered yet?
Whatdyaknow about a father what'll strangle his own child? A man got
drowned after he'd been married only two days. And did I think Dempsey
or Carpentier would win the fight? "Gee! Wouldn't you g