achines nodded to her now
and then, bantering her across the noise of their wheels. She was
ignorant of it, too stupid to know whether life took her in sport or in
earnest! The men themselves worked in their flannel shirts. Not far from
us was a wretchedly ill-looking individual, the very shadow of manhood.
I observed that once he cast toward us a look of interest. Under my feet
was a raised platform on which I stood, bending to my work. During the
morning the consumptive man strolled over and whispered something to
"Bobby." He made her dullness understand. When he had gone back to his
job she said to me:

"Say, w'y don't yer push that platform away and stand down on the floor?
You're too tall to need that. It makes yer bend."

"Did that man come over to tell you this?"

"Yes. He said it made you tired."

From my work, across the room, I silently blessed the pale old man,
bowed, thin, pitiful, over the shoe he held, obscured from me by the
cloud of sawdust-like flying leather that spun scattered from the sole
he held to the flying wheel.

* * * * *

I don't believe the shoe-dye really to be poisonous. I suppose it is
scarcely possible that it can be so; but the constant pressure against
forefinger nail is enough to induce disease. My fingers were swollen
sore. The effects of the work did not leave my hands for weeks.

"Bobby" was not talkative or communicative simply because she had
nothing to say. Over and over again she repeated the one single question
to me during the time I worked by her side: "Do you like your job?" and
although I varied my replies as well as I could with the not too
exhausting topic she offered, I could not induce her to converse. She
took no interest in my work, absorbed in her own. Every now and then
she would compute the sum she had made, finally deciding that the day
was to be a red-bean day and she would make a dollar and fifty cents.
During the time we worked together she had cleaned seventeen cases of
shoes.

In this shop it was hotter than in Parsons'. We sweltered at our work.
Once a case of shoes was cleaned, I wrote my initial "B" on the tag and
rolled the crate across the floor to the man next me, who took it into
his active charge.

The foreman came to me many times to inspect, approve and encourage. He
was a model teacher and an indefatigable superintendent. Just how far
personal, and just how far human, his kindness, who can say?

"You've