ily-entrance cafe again--the bowl of veal stew and two
glasses of beer. Some days following, her very first venture out into the
morning, she found employment--a small printing-shop off Sixth Avenue just
below Twenty-third Street. A mere pocket in the wall, a machine champing in
its plate-glass front.

VISITING-CARDS WHILE YOU WAIT
THIRTY-FIVE CENTS A HUNDRED

She entered.

"The sign says--'girl wanted.'"

A face peered down at her from a high chair behind the champing machine.

"'Goil wanted,' is what it says. Goil!"

"I--I ain't old," she faltered.

"Cut cards?"

"I--Try me."

"Five a week."

"Why--yes."

"Hang your coat and hat behind the sink."

Before noon, a waste of miscut cards about her, she cut her hand slightly,
fumbling at the machine, and cried out.

"For the love of Mike--you want somebody to kiss it and make it well?
Here's a quarter for your time. With them butter-fingers, you better get a
job greasin' popcorn."

Out in the sun-washed streets the wind had hauled a bit. It cut as she bent
into it. With her additional quarter, she still had two dollars and twenty
cents, and that afternoon, in lower Sixth Avenue, at the instance of
another small card fluttering out in the wind, she applied as dishwasher
in a lunch-room and again obtained--this time at six dollars a week and
suppers.

The Jefferson Market Lunch Room, thick with kicked-up sawdust and the fumes
of hissing grease, was sunk slightly below the level of the sidewalk, a
fitting retreat for the mole-like humanity that dined furtively at its
counter. Men with too short coat-sleeves and collars turned up; women with
beery eyes and uneven skirt-hems dank with the bilge-water of life's lower
decks.

Lower Sixth Avenue is the abode of these shadows. Where are they from, and
whither going--these women without beauty, who walk the streets without
handkerchiefs, but blubbering with too much or too little drink? What is
the terrible riddle? Why, even as they blubber, are there women whose
bodies have the quality of cream, slipping in between scented sheets?

Ann 'Lisbeth, hers not to argue, but accept, dallied with no such question.
Behind the lunch-room, a sink of unwashed dishes rose to a mound. She
plunged her hands into tepid water that clung to her like fuzz.

"Ugh!"

"Go to it!" said the proprietor, who wore a black flap over one eye. "Dey
won't bite. If de grease won't cut, souse 'em wit' lye. Don't try to muzzle
no brea