ck."

"Ever been sick?"

"Yes, twice. It's no fun. No matter how much licking a boy gets he
ought never to leave home. The first year or so you don't mind it so
much, but when you've been among strangers two years, three years, all
alone, sick or well, you begin to feel you must get back to your own
folks."

"Are you saving up?" I ask.

He nods his head, not free to speak for tobacco juice.

"I'll be able to leave here in August," he explains, when he has
finished spitting, "for Omaha. In three months I can save up enough to
get on as far as Salt Lake, and in another three months I can move on to
San Francisco. I tell you," he adds, returning to his work, "a person
ought never to leave home." He had nine months of work and privation
before reaching the goal toward which he had been yearning for years.
With what patience he appears possessed compared to our fretfulness at
the fast express trains, which seem to crawl when they carry us full
speed homeward toward those we love! Nine months, two hundred and
seventy days, ten-hour working days, to wait. He was manly. He had the
spirit of adventure; his experience was wide and his knowledge of men
extended; he had managed to take care of himself in one way or another
for seven years, the most trying and decisive in a boy's life. He had
not gone to the bad, evidently, and to his credit he was homeward bound.
His history was something out of the ordinary; yet beyond the circle
where he worked and was considered a hard taskmaster he was a
nonentity--a star in the milky way, a star whose faint rays, without
individual brilliancy, added to the general luster.

The first day I had a touch of pride in getting easily ahead of the new
girl who started in when I did. From my machine I could see only the
back of her head; it was shaking disapproval at every stroke she made
and had to make over again. She had a mass of untidy hair and a slouchy
skirt that slipped out from her belt in the back. If not actually
stupid, she was slow, and the foreman and the girl who took turns
teaching her exchanged glances, meaning that they were exhausting their
patience and would readily give up the job. I was pleased at being
included in these glances, and had a miserable moment of vanity at lunch
time when the old girls, the habitues, came after me to eat with them.
The girl with the untidy hair and the long skirt sat quite by her self.
Without unfolding her newspaper bundle, she took bites of t