e of cloth from the other.

Apparently Frances is exasperated that I should do the job in an easy
way. It is the only way I know to rip, but Frances knows another way
that breaks your back and almost puts your eyes out, that makes you
tired and behindhand and sure of a scolding. She shows me how to rip her
way. The two threads of the machine, one from above and one from below,
which make the stitch, must be separated. The work must be turned first
on the wrong, then on the right side, the scissors must lift first the
upper, then the under thread. I begin by cutting a long hole in the
trousers, which I hide so Frances will not see it. She has frightened me
into dishonesty. Arrived at the middle of the stripe I am obliged to
turn the trousers wrong side out and right side out again every other
stitch. While I was working in this way, getting more enraged every
moment, a bedbug ran out of the seam between my fingers. I killed it. It
was full of blood and made a wet red spot on the table. Then I put down
the trousers and drew away my chair. It was useless saying anything to
the girl next me. She was a Pole, dull, sullen, without a friendly word;
but the two women beyond had told me once that they pitied Frances'
husband, so I looked to them for support in what I was about to do.

"There's bedbugs in them clothes," I said. "I won't work on 'em. No,
sir, not if she sends me away this very minute."

In a great hurry Frances passed me twice. She called out angrily both
times without waiting for an answer:

"Why don't you finish them pants?"

Frances was a German. She wore two rhinestone combs in her frizzes,
which held also dust and burnt odds and ends of hair. She had no lips
whatever. Her mouth shut completely over them after each tirade. Her
eyes were separated by two deep scowls and her voice was shrill and
nasal.

On her third round she faced me with the same question:

"Why don't you finish them pants?"

"Because," I answered this time, "there's bedbugs in 'em and I ain't
goin' to touch 'em!"

"Oh! my!" she taunted me, in a sneering voice, "that's dreadful, ain't
it? Bedbugs! Why, you need only just look on the floor to see 'em
running around anywhere!"

I said nothing more, and this remark was the last Frances ever addressed
to me.

"Mike!" she called to the presser in the corner, "will you have this
_young lady's_ card made out."

She gave me no further work to do, but, too humiliated to sit idle, I
join