er in East Fourteenth Street," I replied mechanically, forgetting for
the moment the catastrophe that had rendered me more homeless than ever.

"Home?"

"No, I room." Then, reading only too quickly an unpleasant
interpretation in the uplifted eyebrows, a disagreeable curiosity
mirrored in the brown eyes beneath, I added hastily, "I have no home. My
folks are all dead."

What impression this bit of information made I was unable to determine
as I followed her slender, slightly bowed figure across the busy,
roaring workroom.

"Be careful you don't get hurt," she cried, as we threaded a narrow
passage in and out among the stamping, throbbing machinery, where, by
the light that filtered through the grimy windows, I got vague, confused
glimpses of girl-faces shining like stars out of this dark, fearful
chaos of revolving belts and wheels, and above the bedlam noises came
girlish laughter and song.

"Good morning, Carrie!" one quick-witted toiler sang out as she spied
the new girl in tow of the forewoman, and suddenly the whole room had
taken up the burden of the song.

"Don't mind them," my conductor remarked. "They don't mean nothing by
it--watch out there for your head!"

Safe through the outlying ramparts of machinery, we entered the domain
of the table-workers, and I was turned over to Phoebe, a tall girl in
tortoise ear-rings and curl-papers. Phoebe was assigned to "learn" me in
the trade of "finishing." Somewhat to my surprise, she assumed the task
joyfully, and helped me off with my coat and hat. From the loud-mouthed
tirades as to "Annie Kinzer's nerve," it became evident that the
assignment of the job of "learner" is one to cause heartburning
jealousies, and that Phoebe, either because of some special adaptability
or through favoritism, got the lion's share of novices.

"That's right, Phoebe; hog every new girl that comes along!" amiably
bawled a bright-faced, tidy young woman who answered to the name of Mrs.
Smith. Mrs. Smith worked briskly as she talked, and the burden of her
conversation appeared to be the heaping of this sort of good-natured
invective upon the head of her chum--or, as she termed it, her
"lady-friend," Phoebe. The amiability with which Mrs. Smith dealt out
her epithets was only equaled by the perfect good nature of her victim,
who replied to each and all of them with a musically intoned, "Hot air!"

"Hot A--i--r!" The clear tones of Phoebe's soprano set the echoes
ringing all over the g