Annie is, "My Gawd! Keep
your mouth shut. 'Ain't you got sense enough to see I'm busy!"

Annie could holler a hundred times, and she does, that she'd knock the
hell out of Fannie, and God would love her every bit as much as he
would love Miss Elizabeth Witherspoon, who has been taught otherwise
and never said hell in her life, not even in a dark closet. Fannie and
all the other Fannies and Idas and Louisas, say, "My Gawd!" as Miss
Elizabeth says "You don't say!" and it is all one to the Heavenly
Father. Therefore, gentle reader, it must be all one to you. There is
not the slightest shade of disrespect in Annie's or Fannie's hearts as
they shower their profanity on creation in general. There is not the
slightest shade in mind as I write of them.

So then, back that first day Lena asked, "Where'd ya work last?"

"Didn't work in a factory before."

"'Ain't ya?"

"No, I 'ain't." (Gulp.) "I took care of kids."

"Gee! but they was fresh."

"You said it!"

"Lena!" hollers Ida. "Get ta work and don't talk so much!" Whereat
Lena gives me another poke in my cold ribs and departs. And Tessie and
I pack "assorteds": four different chocolates in the bottom of each
box, four still different ones in the top--about three hundred and
fifty boxes on our table. We puff and labor on the top layer and Ida
breezes along. "My Gawd! Look at that! Where's your cardboards?"

Tessie and I look woebegone at one another. Cardboards? Cardboards?

Ida glues her Eyetalian eye on Lena down the line. "Lena, you fool,
didn't you tell these here girls about cardboards?... My Gawd! My
Gawd!" says Ida. Whereat she dives into our belabored boxes and grabs
those ached-over chocolates and hurls them in a pile. "Get all them
top ones out. Put in cardboards. Put 'em all in again." Tessie and I
almost could have wept. By that time it is about 4. We are all feet,
feet, FEET. First I try standing on one foot to let the other think I
might really, after all, be sitting down. Then I stand on it and give
the other a delusion. Then try standing on the sides, the toes, the
heels. FEET! "Ach! Mein Gott!" moans Tessie. "To-morrow I go look for
a job in a biscuit factory."

"Leave me know if you get a sit-down one."

And in that state--FEET--Ida makes us pack over the whole top layer in
three hundred and fifty boxes. Curses on Lena and her "dopes." Or
curses on me that I could so suddenly invent such picturesque love
affairs that Lena forgot all about cardbo