child. "That takes the brains!" says
Tessie. "Not for me! It gives me the ache in my head to think of it."

Indeed it near gives me the ache in mine. Before the next to the last
row is packed the bottom looks completely filled. Where can four fat
chocolates in cups find themselves? I push the last row over gently to
make room,--three chocolates in the middle rear up and stand on end.
Press them gently down and two more on the first row get out of hand.
At last the last row is in--only to discover four candies here and
there have all sprung their moorings. For each one I press down
gently, another some place else acts up. How long can my patience
hold out? Firmly, desperately I press that last obstreperous chocolate
down in its place. My finger goes squash through the crusty brown, and
pink goo oozes up and out. A fresh strawberry heart must be found.
"Ain't no more," announces Fannie. Might just as well tell an artist
there is only enough paint for one eye on his beautiful portrait. Of
course another chocolate can be substituted. But a strawberry heart
was what belonged there!

At last the long rows of boxes are packed, wax paper laid over
each--to blow off every time Louie goes by. Then come covers with
lovely ladies in low-neck dresses on the tops--and the room so cold,
anyhow. Why are all the pictures on all the boxes smiling ladies in
scanty attire, instead of wrapped to the ears in fur coats so that a
body might find comfort in gazing on them in such a temperature?

Ida comes along and peers in one box. "You can consider yourself a
fancy packer now--see?" Harding the night of the election felt less
joyous than do I at her words.

This night there is a lecture at the New School for Social Research to
be attended. If some of those educated foreigners in our room can go
to night school, I guess I can keep up my school. They are all
foreigners but Lillian and Sadie and I. Sadie is about the same
Indian-summer stage as Lillian and uses even better English. Her
eyebrows are also unduly black; her face looks a bit as if she had
been trying to get the ring out of the flour with her teeth
Halloween. Her lips are very red. Sadie has the air of having just
missed being a Vanderbilt. Her boudoir cap is lacy. Her smile is
conscious kindness to all as inferiors. One wonders, indeed, what
brought Sadie to packing chocolates in the autumn of life--a very
wrinkly, powdered autumn. So Lillian, Sadie, and I are the
representati