Part 7 (1/2)

For the first day or two I was noticed with indifference on the part of some, resentment on the part of others, but on the third day, as I took my place in the pus.h.i.+ng, laughing, growling crowd that made its way up several flights of stairs to the big room where shabby clothes are changed for yet shabbier working ones, my good-mornings were greeted with less grudging acknowledgments, and now we are quite friendly, these ”Hands” and I, and through their eyes I am seeing myself and others like me--seeing much and many things from an angle never used before.

They nodded to me less hesitatingly as the days went by, and at the noon hour, when I have my lunch with first one group and then another, I find them, on the whole, frank and outspoken, find they have as decided opinions concerning what they term people like that--which term is usually accompanied by a gesture in the direction where I once lived--as said people have concerning them, to whom, as a rule, they also refer in much the same manner and with the same words. With each group on either side of its separating gulf the conviction is firm that little is to be hoped for or expected from the other, and common qualities are forgotten in the realization of distinctive differences.

”What's the most you ever made a week?” The girl who asked the question moved up for me to sit on the bench beside her, and, unwrapping a newspaper parcel, took from it a large cuc.u.mber pickle, a piece of cheese, a couple of biscuits, and half of a cocoanut pie, and laid them on a table in front of her. ”Help yourself.” She pushed the paper serving as tray and cloth toward me. ”I ain't had much appet.i.te lately. h.e.l.lo, Mamie! Come over here and sit on our bench. What you got good for lunch? My stomach's turned back on pie. I'd give ten cents for a cup of coffee.”

”Everywhere else but this old hothouse sells it for two cents a cup without, and three cents with.” The girl called Mamie nodded to me and took her seat on the bench. ”I don't like milk nohow, and I'd give the money glad for something hot in the middle of the day.

Don't nothing do your insides as much good as something piping hot.

Say--I saw Barker last night.” Her voice lowered but little. ”He and I are going to see 'Some Girl' at the Bijou next week. It's all make-up--his being sweet on Ceeley Bayne! That knock-kneed, slew-footed, pop-eyed Gracie Jones got that off. I'm going to get one them lace-and-chiffon waists at Plum's for $2.98 if don't n.o.body get sick and need medicine between now and Wednesday. Seems like somebody's always sick at our house.”

The question asked me had been forgotten, and, glad to escape the acknowledgment that I had never earned a dollar in my life, I got up on the plea that I must see a girl at the other end of the room, and walked across it. As I went I scanned each face I saw. Consciously or subconsciously I had been hoping for days that I would see a face which ever haunts me, a face I wanted to forget and could not forget.

Everywhere I go, in factories or mills or shops or homes; in the streets, and at my windows, I am always wondering if I shall see her.

She was very unhappy. Who is she? Why was Selwyn with her? It is my last thought at night, my first in the morning.

Yesterday I was at the box-factory where Jimmy Gibbons works. It is his last week there. On the fifteenth he starts again to school.

Knowing the president of the company well, I asked that Jimmy should be my guide through the various departments, and permission was given. I wish Jimmy were mine.

”Miss High-Spy 'ain't got any love for on-lookers, and we'd better not stay in here long.” Jimmy's voice was cautious, but his eyes merry, and, glancing in the direction of the sour and snappy person watching each movement of each worker, I agreed with him that it was not well to linger. The room was big and bare, its benches filled with white-faced workers, and the autocrat who presided over it seemed unconscious of its stifling, steamy heat and sickening smells of glue and paste. Going out into the hall, Jimmy and I went to a window, opened it, and gave our lungs a bath.

”What does she do it for? Is she crazy?”

”Not asylum-crazy--mean-crazy.” Jimmy's head nodded first negatively, then with affirmation. ”She's come up from the beginning place, and used to be a fire-eater before she got to be boss of our bunch, and the men say people like that, people who ain't used to driving, drive harder than any other kind when they get the chance.

She's a bully to the under ones, but the uppers--” Jimmy's eyes were lifted to mine and his lips made a whistling sound. ”If Mr.

Pritchard kicked her in the face, she'd lick the soles of his shoes when he was doing it, if she could. She wants to be boss of the room up-stairs and Mr. Pritchard can put her where he pleases. If he don't do it, he'd better, the women say, 'count of her knowing more about him than he knows she knows. I don't know what 'tis, but I hate her. All of us hate her.”

”Why doesn't some one speak to Mr. Johns? Certainly he can't know--”

”Yes 'm, he does. Joe d.i.c.kson and Bob Beazley told him once, and the next week they got a hand-out. High-Spy made Mr. Pritchard do it.

Mr. Johns leaves those kinds of things to him. Swell folks like him 'ain't got time to look after folks like us. He's awful rich, ain't he?”

”He isn't poor. When are you going to have your lunch?” I looked at my watch. ”Can't you go out and have it with me? I'll ask Mr.

Johns. Come on, quick. I'll see the other rooms when I come back.”

Jimmy shook his head. ”I can't go. I ain't being docked 'count of being with you, because Mr. Pritchard sent me, but he wouldn't let me come back if I went out. I been sent down to him once to-day, and please 'm don't ask him, please 'm don't!”

In Jimmy's voice was something of terror, and his hands slipped in and out of his trousers' pockets with nervous, frightened movements.

His usually merry little mouth with its pale lips quivered oddly, and in his eyes, as he turned away, were tears I could not understand.

I put my hand on his shoulder, lifted his face to mine. ”What is it, Jimmy? What has happened that you don't want me to ask Mr. Johns to tell Mr. Pritchard you can go with me? Why are you afraid?”

”I ain't afraid. Yes 'm, I am. I--I've been docked once to-day.

Please 'm don't ask Mr. Pritchard nothing! High-Spy makes him punish me whenever--”

”Punish you!” I straightened indignantly. ”Why does he punish you?

What right--”