't
cost me anything!"

So that is where your golden noon hour is spent, standing, running,
waiting, serving in the ill-smelling restaurant I shall name later; and
not your dinner hour alone, but the long day's fag end!

"I ain't from these parts," she continued, confidentially, "I'm down
East. I used to run a machine, but it hurts my side."

My job went well for an amateur. I finished one case of shoes
(thirty-six pairs) in little more than an hour. By ten o'clock the room
grew stifling hot. I was obliged to discard my dress skirt and necktie,
loosen collar, roll up my sleeves. My warmer blooded companions did the
like. It was singular to watch the clock mark out the morning hours, and
at ten, already early, very early in the forenoon, feel tired because
one had been three hours at work.

A man came along with nuts and apples in a basket to sell. I bought an
apple for five cents. It was regarded by my teacher, Maggie, as a
prodigal expenditure! I shared it with her, and she in turn shared her
half with her neighbours, advising me wisely.

"Say, you'd better _earn_ an apple before you buy one!"

My companion on the other side was a pretty country girl. She regarded
her work with good-humoured indifference; indeed, her labour was of very
indifferent quality. I don't believe she was ever intended to make
shoes. In a cheerful "undertone she sang topical songs the morning long.
It drove Maggie McGowan "mad," so she said.

"Say, why don't some of _youse_ sing?" said the little creature, looking
down our busy line. "I never hear no singing in the shops."

Maggie said, "Sing! Well, I don't come here to sing."

The other laughed sweetly.

"Well, I jest have to sing."

"You seem happy; are you?" She looked at me out of her pretty blue eyes.

"You bet! That's the way to be!" Then after a little, in an aside to me
alone, she whispered:

"Not always. Sometimes I cry all to myself.

"See the sun?" she exclaimed, lifting her head. (It shone golden through
the window's dirty, cloudy pane.) "He's peekin' at me! He'll find _you_
soon. Looks like he was glad to see us sitting here!"

Sun, friend, light, air, seek them--seek them! Pour what tide of pure
gold you may in through the sullied pane; touch, caress the bowed heads
at the clicking machines! Shine on the dusty, untidy hair! on the bowed
shoulders! on the flying hands!

At noon I made a reluctant concession to wisdom and habit. Unwilling to
thwart my purposes and