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ent half of the legally allotted hour, the time to be repaid them later, so that after Christmas they might take once a week an hour and a half in the middle of the day instead of an hour. Those in the know had learned that, as on Christmas Eve most of the extra hands received with their pay envelope a week's notice to quit, they, at least, never got back the half-hours lent. As for the permanent hands, it would amount to a black mark secretly put against their names if they dared lay claim to the time owing. Win, however, was blissfully ignorant of this, and though she was tired, the arrangement seemed fair to her. As she got up from the table to spend fifteen minutes in the rest room she was almost happy in the thought of having the sardine for a neighbour. Two of the girls who had come up from the bargain square with her, on the return of Miss Stein and their other seniors, looked after Win as she passed out of the restaurant. "There goes Miss Thank-you-I-beg-your-pardon," said the young lady who had wondered if 2884 were a spy. "She's got a smile as if she was invited to tea with the Vanderbilts." "By this time next week I bet she smiles the wrong side of her mouth if she puts on any airs with Dora Stein." "Hum-m, yeh. Unless what you think's so, and she's on the right side o' Father." It was true, as the girls had warned the new hand, when six o'clock--closing time--came, you "couldn't chase the dames out." The salespeople began to put things away, and some even ventured to remind customers that the shop shut at six; but ladies who believed themselves possessed of the kindest hearts on earth pleaded that they must have _one_ more thing, only _just_ one, to complete their list for that day. Those who were too cross and tired to think about hearts or anything else except their own nerves, made no excuses at all, but demanded what they wanted or threatened a report to the floorwalker if a saleswoman were "disagreeable." "Look at them!" snapped Miss Stein, maddened by a consignment of more blouses from the bankrupt sale (which had brought upon Horrocks the gibes of the head buyer), blouses without sashes, which not even Poiret could have turned into "Pavlovas." "Look at them, the fat, old, self-satisfied lemons, with their hats and their dresses and their squeezed-in corsets and shoes, and even their back hair, bought in sweat shops like ours! Pills, going to their homes to say their prayers, and then, fu
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