unice smiled a little after a while.

"Is youse lady-friends?" the forewoman asked when, in the course of ten
minutes, she came to inspect our progress; on receiving an affirmative
reply, she scowled.

"Fiddlesticks! If I'd knowed youse was lady-friends, I'd jist told Izzy
he could get some other girls," and she walked off, still scowling. The
girls about us giggled.

"Why doesn't Miss Gibbs like us to be lady-friends?" asked Bessie.

A young Italian answered, "Because they always git to scrappin'."

We all laughed--even Eunice--at such an ending to our friendship.

"We had a fearful row here yisterday," spoke up another; "and they wuz
lady-friends--thicker than sardines, they wuz--till they got on the outs
about a feller down on Pearl Street; a diamond-cutter he wuz, and they
wuz both mashed on him--a Dutchman, too, he wuz, that wore ear-rings. I
couldn't get mashed on a Dutchman, ear-rings or no ear-rings, could
you?"

"What did they do?" asked Bessie.

"Do! They snapped at each other all morning over the work-table, and
then one of them called the other a name that wuz something awful, and
she up and spit in her face for it."

"Well, I don't blame that girl for spitting in her face," interrupted a
voice. "I don't blame her; lady-like or not lady-like, I'd have done the
same thing. I'd spit in the President's face if I was in the White House
and he was to call me such a name!"

"And then what happened?" asked Bessie.

"Oh, they just up and at each other like two cats, tumbling over a stack
of them there white velvet necklace-cases, and bloodying up each other's
faces something fierce; and then Miss Gibbs she called Izzy; and Izzy he
fired them on the spot."

Despite these tales of strenuous conflicts, we were happy in our work at
Wolff's. Our shop-mates were quiet, decent-looking girls, and their
conversation was conspicuously clean--not always a characteristic of
their class. Miss Gibbs, despite her justifiable prejudice against
lady-friends, proved not unkind, and we congratulated ourselves as we
bent over our work and listened to the cheerful hum of voices.

After each case was finished,--after the satin linings and interlinings
and the tuftings had been fitted and glued into their proper places, and
the bit of leather drawn across the padded cover,--we could raise our
eyes for a moment and look out upon a strange, fascinating world. The
open windows on one side of the shop looked into the polishing-