ed it over together, these two, the girl might
have found relief. But the family shyness of their class was too strong
upon them. Once Mrs. Golden had said, in an effort at sympathy:
"Person'd think Chuck Mory was the only one who'd gone to war an' the
last fella left in the world."

A grim flash of the old humour lifted the corners of the wide mouth. "He
is. Who's there left? Stumpy Gans, up at the railroad crossing? Or maybe
Fatty Weiman, driving the hack. Guess I'll doll up this evening and see
if I can't make a hit with one of them."

She relapsed into bitter silence. The bottom had dropped out of Tessie
Golden's world.

* * * * *

In order to understand the Tessie of to-day you will have to know the
Tessie of six months ago; Tessie the impudent, the life-loving, the
pleasureful. Tessie Golden could say things to the escapement-room
foreman that any one else would have been fired for. Her wide mouth was
capable of glorious insolences. Whenever you heard shrieks of laughter
from the girls' wash room at noon you knew that Tessie was holding forth
to an admiring group. She was a born mimic; audacious, agile, and with
the gift of burlesque. The autumn that Angie Hatton came home from
Europe wearing the first hobble skirt that Chippewa had ever seen Tessie
gave an imitation of that advanced young woman's progress down Grand
Avenue in this restricted garment. The thing was cruel in its fidelity,
though containing just enough exaggeration to make it artistic. She
followed it up by imitating the stricken look on the face of Mattie
Haynes, cloak and suit buyer at Megan's, who, having just returned from
the East with what she considered the most fashionable of the new fall
styles, now beheld Angie Hatton in the garb that was the last echo of
the last cry in Paris modes--and no model in Mattie's newly selected
stock bore even the remotest resemblance to it.

You would know from this that Tessie was not a particularly deft worker.
Her big-knuckled fingers were cleverer at turning out a shirt waist or
retrimming a hat. Hers were what are known as handy hands, but not
sensitive. It takes a light and facile set of fingers to fit pallet and
arbour and fork together: close work and tedious. Seated on low benches
along the tables, their chins almost level with the table top, the girls
worked with pincers and gas flame, screwing together the three tiny
parts of the watch's anatomy that was their par