hose that played
over it. "Seems like I'd just like to lie down there and sleep with my
face clost up to it, all wet and cool-like, all night!" sighed one poor
little bony victim of a girl, scarcely more than a child, as the throng
pressed out the wide door at six o'clock and caught the moist fragrance
of the damp earth and growing vine.

"You look all in, Susie!" said her neighbor, pausing in her interminable
gum-chewing to eye her friend keenly. "Say, you better go with me to
the movies to-night! I know a nice cool one fer a nickel!"

"Can't!" sighed Susie. "'Ain't got ther nickel, and, besides, I gotta
stay with gran'mom while ma goes up with some vests she's been makin'.
Oh, I'm all right! I jus' was thinkin' about the vine; it looks so cool
and purty. Say, Katie, it's somepin' to b'long to a vine like that, even
if we do have it rotten sometimes! Don't you always feel kinda
proud-like when you come in the door, 'most as if it was a palace? I
like to pertend it's all a great big house where I live, and there's
carpets and lace curtings to the winders, and a real gold sofy with
pink-velvet cushings! And when I come down and see one of the company's
ottymobiles standin' by the curb waitin', I like to pertend it's mine,
only I don't ride 'cause I've been ridin' so much I'd _ruther_ walk!
Don't you ever do that, Katie?"

"Not on yer _life_, I don't!" said Katie, with an ugly frown. "I hate
the old dump! I hate every stone in the whole pile! I could tear that
nasty green vine down an' stamp on it. I'd like to strip its leaves off
an' leave it bare. I'd like to turn the hose off and see it dry up an'
be all brown, an' ugly, an' dead. It's stealin' the water they oughtta
have over there in the fountain. It's stealin' the money they oughtta
pay us fer our work! It's creepin' round the winders an' eatin' up the
air. Didn't you never take notice to how they let it grow acrost the
winders to hide folks from lookin' in from the visitor's winders there
on the east side? They don't care how it shuts away the draught and
makes it hotter 'n a furnace where we work! No, you silly! I never was
proud to come in that old marble door! I was always mad, away down
inside, that I had to work here. I had to go crawlin' and askin' fer a
job, an' take all their insults, an' be locked in a trap. Take it from
me, there's goin' to be some awful accident happen here some day! If a
fire should break out how many d'you s'pose could get out before