They alighted at a kind of wooded island, girt by trolley lines and
crisscrossed by many paths, along one of which they struck. Although it
was November, the benches by the way frequently held slouching forms,
sodden men or unkempt women, at whom none glanced save a fat policeman.
Neighboring electric signs lit the lower end of the little park
brilliantly, and here, cheek by jowl with restaurant, vaudeville, and
saloon, Jean suddenly spied an august figure with which school-history
woodcuts had made her familiar from pinafores.
"Why, this is Union Square!" she cried triumphantly. "I know it by
Washington's statue over there. And this street we're coming to must be
Broadway."
"You're not so slow," said Amy, halting at the curb. "Here's another
chance to show your speed. Mind you step lively when I see a chance."
In the same breath she dragged her charge into a narrowing gap between
two street-cars, dodged a truck, circled a push-cart, and issued
miraculously, safe and sound, upon the farther side.
They traversed now a street of entrancing shop-windows over which Jean
exclaimed, but which Amy in her sophistication dismissed with the
brief comment that the real thing was elsewhere. With the same careless
unconcern she dropped, "This is Fifth Avenue," at their next crossing;
but she immediately discounted Jean's awe by adding, "Not the swell
section, you know," and hurried from its unworthy precincts toward an
avenue which the elevated railroad bestrode. This, too, was wonderfully
curious, with its countless little shops and stalls, but Amy allowed
her a mere taste of it only and whipped round a corner into a dimly lit
street of dwellings, each with a scrap of a dooryard tucked behind an
iron fence.
As they mounted the high steps of one of these houses, Jean remarked
with due respect that it was unmistakably a brownstone front--a species
of metropolitan grandeur upon which untravelled Shawnee Springs often
speculated vaguely; though its dilapidation, obvious even by night,
helped to put her at her ease. A placard inscribed, "Furnished Rooms
and Board," held a prominent station in one of the basement windows,
which was further adorned with a strange symbol upon red pasteboard,
explained by Amy, while they waited, as a mute appeal to a certain
haughty city official whose business was the collection of garbage.
"The landlady's name is St. Aubyn," Amy further imparted; "or at any
rate that's what she goes by. She's the grass-widow of an actor. Some
people say her real name is Haggerty, but that needn't bother us. We
can't afford to be finicky, or at least I can't."
"Nor I," agreed Jean.
Mrs. St. Aubyn, who at this juncture opened the door in person, looked
a weary-eyed woman of fifty-odd, in whose face still lingered some
melancholy vestiges of charm. She greeted, without enthusiasm, Amy's
buoyant announcement that she had brought her a new boarder, saying
that, although she had no complaint to make of Miss Jeffries and
supposed she should get on equally well with her friend, on the whole
she preferred men.
"They all do," cried Amy, in mock dudgeon. "Every blessed
boarding-house in New York prefers men."
The actor's grass-widow did not question this sweeping statement,
evidently deeming it a truism which needed neither explanation nor
defence, but went on to say that inasmuch as Miss Jeffries already
knew the rooms and prices, and since she herself was dog-tired, and
the turnips were burning, and the cream-puffs had not come, and one
could not trust the best of servants beyond one's nose, she would leave
them to themselves, all of which she delivered with dwindling breath,
backing meanwhile toward the basement stair, till voice and speaker
vanished together.
"Don't mind her little ways," consoled Amy, leading the way upward.
"She is really tickled to death to see you. The elevator's out of
order," she added facetiously, "but I'm on the first floor--counting
from the roof down. A good place it is, too, on hot summer nights when
breezes are scarce."
She showed the narrow rear hall-bedroom she now occupied; a rather
bigger cell, deriving its ventilation solely from a skylight, which
Jean might have at the same price; and, finally, in enviable contrast,
a really spacious chamber at the front, possessing no less than three
windows,--dormers, it was true, yet windows,--a generous closet, and
a steam-radiator, all within their united means did they care to room
together. Amy tried to state the case dispassionately, but she could
not weigh the advantages of three dormers, a full-grown closet, and a
steam-radiator with perfect calm, and after one glance, not at these
persuasive features, but Amy's, Jean promptly voted for the joint
arrangement.
Amy hugged her rapturously.
"If you only knew how I've wanted it!" she exclaimed. "You can't
possibly do better for your money than here. Take my word for it, I've
tramped everywhere to see. It has a lot of good points. For one thing,
you'll be within walking distance of a warm lunch that won't cost
extra, and that's a big item, I can tell you. Besides, you'll meet nice
people. A dentist has the second floor front who's a regular swell, but
real sociable, and in the hall-bedroom, third floor back, there's an
old man who works in the Astor Library. He knows so much, I'm almost
afraid to talk to him. Why, they say he had a college education!
Then, there's a girl who typewrites for a law firm down in Nassau
Street--she's on our floor; another who's a manicure; and a quiet old
couple that used to have money, but lost it in Wall Street. All those
are permanents. There are two others, a man and his wife, who may go
any time because they belong to the profession."
"Which?" asked Jean, innocently.
"Why, the stage. Mrs. St. Aubyn always calls it 'the profession.' She
gets actors off and on who are waiting for engagements. She must have
known a stack of them once."
Jean shrank from the thought of dining with this array of fashion,
learning, and talent, particularly when she discovered that one long
table held them all; but nothing could have been less formal than
the meal. The prodigy of learning from the Astor, who, by virtue of
intellect or seniority, sat at the head of the board in pleasing
domestic balance to Mrs. St. Aubyn at the foot, chatted amiably
with Jean and Amy, quite like a person of ordinary attainments. The
stenographer exchanged ideas upon winter styles with the wife of the
shorn lamb of Wall Street, who, on his part, forgot his losses in a
four-sided discussion, with the manicure and the professional birds of
passage, of the President's latest speech, a document which it tardily
developed none of them had read.
Mrs. St. Aubyn's conversation dealt mainly with the food, and was
aimed at the maid, whose blunders were apparently legion, but even she
found leisure, as did every person in the room, for a quip with the
jocund ruling spirit of the feast, Dr. Paul Bartlett. Coming last, the
dentist instantly leavened the whole lump. He drew gems of dramatic
criticism from the players, got the bookworm's opinion of a popular
novel, inquired the day's happenings on 'Change' from the shorn lamb,
discussed a murder trial with the legal stenographer, the outrageous
rise in price of coal with Mrs. St. Aubyn, and the growing extravagance
of women's sleeves with Amy and the manicure, all between the soup and
fish. In fine, as Mrs. St. Aubyn loudly whispered to Jean in leaving
the dining room, he was the life of the occasion. Whether he heard this
or not, Doctor Bartlett redoubled his efforts, if they were efforts,
when after eddying uncertainly about the newel post of the main hall
the company finally drifted into the drawing-room.
This was not a blithesome apartment. It ran extraordinarily to
length and height, Jean thought, rather to the scamping of its third
dimension, and was decorated after the dreary fashion of the decade
immediately succeeding the Civil War. Its woodwork was black walnut,
its chandelier a writhing mass of tortured metal, its mantelpiece
a marble sepulchre. A bedizened family Bible of some thirty pounds
avoirdupois, lying upon a stand ill designed to bear its weight,
blocked one window, while a Rogers group, similarly supported, filled
the other. The pictures were sadly allegorical save one, a large
engraving entitled "The Trial of Effie Deans." Yet, despite these
handicaps, the dentist contrived to give the room an air of cheer.
Spying a deck of cards upon the entablature of the mausoleum, he
performed a mystifying trick, which he followed with fortunes, told
as cleverly as a gypsy's, and with feats of sleight of hand. Then,
dropping to the piano-stool, he coaxed from the venerable instrument
a two-step which set everybody's feet beating time; passed from this
to a "coon song" one could easily imagine was sung by a negro; and,
finally, chief marvel of all, he succeeded in luring everybody except
Jean into joining the chorus of the latest popular air. In the midst
of all these things he narrated most amusing little stories, mainly of
dentists' offices, punctuated with dental oaths and imprecations like
"Holy Molars" and "Suffering Bicuspid," which sounded comically profane
without being so.
The girls discussed him animatedly from their pillows in the wonderful
room of three dormers.
"Didn't I tell you he was sociable?" Amy demanded. "Can't he sing
simply dandy? And isn't he good-looking?"
Jean gave a general assent. She liked the young fellow's breeziness.
She liked his cleanliness, too, and remarked upon it.
"I noticed it first of all," she said.
"Yes, and what's better," added Amy, "you'll never see him look any
different. He says soap and water mean dollars in his business. That's
one reason why he's so run after at the parlors. None of the other
dentists there seem to care."
"Then he hasn't an office of his own?"
"Not yet. He works in a Painless Dental Parlor over on Sixth Avenue.
You'll know the place by a tall darky in uniform they keep at the foot
of the stairs to hand out circulars."
"Do you suppose he thought it strange that I didn't sing with the
rest?" Jean asked anxiously. "He looked round twice."
"I shouldn't wonder. He couldn't guess, naturally, that you've had a
steady diet of hymns for three years. Still, that song is only just
out, and half of us didn't know the words."
"Did I do anything else queer?"
"Well, you tried hard to pass dishes down the line, instead of letting
the maid do it, and you looked sideways a good deal without turning
your head. I don't think of anything else just now unless it's that
you're as nervous as a cat. Miss Archer did her best to make us girls
act like other human beings, but she didn't run the whole refuge,
more's the pity. I've got a stack of things to thank her for. Do you
notice I don't say 'ain't' any more?"
"Yes."
"She broke me of that. She said I'd find it paid to speak good English,
and I have. Already it's meant dollars to me, just like the doctor's
soap and water."
Jean wondered how grammatical accuracy could further the making of
cloaks, but Amy had suddenly become too drowsy to explain. Rest came
less easily to the newcomer. The muffled roar of the elevated railroad,
heeded by the urban ear no more than the beat of surf, teased her
excited senses to insomnia. Oblivion came abruptly when she despaired
of sleep at all, and then, as quickly, morning, with Amy shaking
her awake. The light from the three dormers was still uncertain and
the air chill, for though the prized radiator clanked and whistled
prodigiously, it emitted no warmth.
Jean sprang up hurriedly.
"Am I late?"
"No; early. I thought you'd better get down to Meyer & Schwarzschild's
a little before time the first day. You'll have to wear your
street-suit there, of course, but you need another skirt and a big
apron for work. Just use these I've laid out as long as you like."
"But you'll need them yourself."
Amy smiled mysteriously.
"No, I shan't," she returned, shaking down a smart black skirt over a
petticoat which gave forth the unmistakable rustle of silk. "In fact,
this is my work-dress--or one of them." She revolved slowly before the
glass a moment, relishing Jean's astonishment, then went on: "I'll have
to own up now. The cat was almost out of the bag last night. I didn't
want to tell you till this morning. I thought it might discourage you.
I'm not with Meyer & Schwarzschild any more."
"You've left the cloak firm!" Jean was taken aback, but tried to hide
her disappointment. "I'm glad you've done better," glancing again at
Amy's magnificence; "it's easy to see you have."
"Well, I guess! I'm a cloak-model in one of the biggest department
stores in the United States."
"A cloak-model!" The term suggested only a wax-faced dummy to Jean.
"What do you do?"
"Walk up and down before the millionaires' wives, and make the pudgy
old things think they'll look as well as I do if they buy the garment.
But they never do look as well. I got the place through a buyer who
came to Meyer & Schwarzschild's once in a while. He saw that I have
style and a good figure, and don't say 'ain't'--he really mentioned
that!--and told the cloak department that I was the girl they were
looking for. Sounds easy, doesn't it?"
It sounded anything but easy to Jean.
"And you like it?" she said. "But I needn't ask you that."
"Don't I! Maybe it doesn't give you thrills to parade up and down
with a three-hundred-dollar evening wrap on your back! But cheer up,"
she added quickly, reading Jean's face. "I'm going down to Meyer &
Schwarzschild's with you this morning and give you a rousing send-off."
X
The section of Broadway to which Amy piloted Jean, showing her all the
short cuts which would save precious time at lunch hour, seemed wholly
given over to wholesale establishments with signs bearing Hebrew names.
"Yes; this is Main Street of the New Jerusalem, all right," she
assented to Jean's comment; "but you'll find there are Jews and Jews in
the clothing trade. I'd hate to work for some of the chosen people I've
seen, but you'd have to hunt a long time to find a more well-meaning
man than old Mr. Meyer. I only hope he'll be down this morning."
Other workers, chiefly women and girls, crowded into the rough freight
elevator by which they ascended, and one or two who got off with them
at Meyer & Schwarzschild's loft greeted Amy by name. They inventoried
her finery minutely, Jean saw, and nudging one another, arched
significant brows when her back was turned. On her part, Amy took
little notice of them, and, without introducing Jean, swept by toward
the flimsy partition of wood and ground glass which shut the workrooms
from the counting-room, brushed aside an office boy, who demanded her
business, and knocked at a half-open door lettered, "Jacob Meyer, Sr."
The head of the firm, who bade them enter, was a very old man with
a patriarchal beard. He smiled benignantly, recognized Amy after a
moment's hesitation, asked about her new position, and patted her on
the shoulder when she told him he must be as good to Miss Fanshaw as he
had been to her. Turning to Jean, he said that Miss Archer had never
sent them a poor worker.
"I have the highest opinion of Miss Archer," he added, with the air of
a presiding officer who relished the taste of his own periods. "Her
charity knows neither Jew nor Gentile. I met her first here in New York
when some of us were trying a philanthropic experiment in the so-called
Ghetto. It presented grave difficulties, very grave difficulties,
and it is hardly too much to say,--in fact, I have no hesitation in
saying,--that Miss Archer saved the day. I recall one most signal
instance of her tact--"
He would have rambled on willingly, but Amy cut in with the statement
that she must be off, squeezed Jean's hand encouragingly, and whisked
out forthwith. Her abrupt exit seemed to disorder the deliberate
clockwork of old Mr. Meyer's thoughts, for he sat some little time
staring at a letter-file with his mouth ajar, till, recollecting
himself at last, he brought forth, "As I was saying, my dear, I trust
you'll like our ways,"--which Jean was certain he had not said at
all,--and thereupon led her to the door of one of the workrooms and
turned her over to its forewoman, a stout Jewess with oily black hair
combed low to disguise her too prominent ears.
Work had begun, and the place was deafening with the whir of some
thirty-odd close-ranked machines which, their ends almost touching,
filled all the floor save the narrowest of aisles, where stood the
chairs of the operators. To one of these sewing-machines and a
huge pile of unstitched sleeves Jean was assigned. The task itself
was simple, after the sound training of the refuge school, but the
conditions under which she worked told heavily against her efficiency.
The din was incessant, the light poor, the low-ceiled room crowded
beyond its air-space, and the floor none too clean. As the morning drew
on, the atmosphere became steadily worse. Now and then the forewoman
would open a window,--she stood mainly by a door herself, turning and
turning a showy ring upon her fat index finger,--but the relatively
purer air thus admitted reached only the girls who worked nearest, of
whom Jean was not one, and these soon shivered and complained of drafts.
By the time the hands of a dingy clock marked ten, her head was
throbbing violently and her spine seemed one prolonged ache. Her
neighbors, except a thin-cheeked woman who stopped now and again to
cough, turned off their stints with the regularity of long habit,
straightening only to seize fresh supplies for their insatiable
machines. At twelve o'clock, when whistles blew from all quarters
and the other employees, dropping work as it stood, scrambled for
lunch-boxes or wraps, Jean relaxed in her chair, too jaded to rise.
Food was out of the question,--even the look of the pickle-scented
luncheons which some of the cloak-makers opened made her ill,--but
she presently dragged herself outdoors, and striking down a cross
street, at whose farther end she could see trees, came to a little park
distinguished by a marble arch, where she wandered aimlessly till she
judged it time to return.
The streets she retraced were now thronged with masculine wage-earners
lounging and smoking in the doorways of their various places of
employment. All paid her the tribute of a stare, and some made audible
comments on her hair or eyes, or what they termed her shape. Her own
doorway was also crowded. These idlers were, for the most part, girls
from the many garment-manufactories of one sort and another which the
great building housed; but a man stood here and there, either the
leader or the butt of some horse-play. One of the young women who had
scrutinized Amy in the elevator nodded to her and seemed about to
speak, but Jean felt too heart-sick for words, and returned at once
to her appointed corner in the hive, where, although it still lacked
something of one o'clock, she again sat down to her machine. The air
was better, for the windows had been thrown open during the noon-hour,
but the room was in consequence very chill, and her fellow-workers,
now drifting back in twos and threes, grumbled as they came. Among
them was the girl who had greeted her below, and looking at her with
more interest Jean read kindness in her freckled face. Their eyes met
again, with a half-smile, and the girl edged down the narrow lane for a
moment's gossip.
"You'll find it better to take a bite of lunch, even if you don't
hanker for it," she observed.
"How do you know I haven't?" Jean asked.
"That's easy. For one reason, I seen you walkin' in Washington Square.
For another, a green hand here don't never want lunch. Not used to this
kind of thing, are you?"
"To the work, yes; not the noise, the bad air."
"Where'd you work last?"
"In a small town," she eluded.
"That's different. You don't have the sweat-shop in the country, I
guess."
"Sweat-shop!" Jean had heard that sinister term before. "Is that what
they call Meyer & Schwarzschild's?"
The girl laughed at her simplicity.
"I call it one," she rejoined, "even if it is on Broadway. Don't low
wages and dirt and bad air and disease make a sweat-shop?"
"Disease! What do you mean?"
"Well, consumption, for instance. It isn't bronchitis, as she thinks,
that ails the woman next machine to you. I could tell you other things,
but what's the use! You won't stop here any longer than I will, and
that's just long enough to find a better job."
The afternoon lapsed somehow. Once, a youngish, overdressed man with
blustering manners and thick, bright-red lips came into their workroom
and told the forewoman that a certain order must be rushed. He idled
near Jean's machine for an interval, under pretence of examining her
work, but he mainly looked her in the face. As he passed down the
aisles, he touched this girl and that familiarly. Those so favored
were without exception pretty, and they usually simpered under his
attentions, though one or two grimaced afterward. When he had gone,
Jean's thin-cheeked neighbor told her between coughs that this was the
younger Meyer.
She met him again when she passed the offices in leaving for the night,
and he again stared fixedly, wearing his repulsive, scarlet smile. She
jumped at the conclusion that old Mr. Meyer had mentioned that she
came from a reformatory, and hurried by with burning cheeks. The night
air refreshed her a little, but the way home seemed endless, and the
three flights from Mrs. St. Aubyn's door to the dormered bedroom were
appalling in prospect. She entered faint with hunger and fagged with
a thoroughness she had not known since the earlier days in the refuge
laundry.
Amy sprang up from a novel.
"Don't say a word," she charged. "I suspicioned how it would be when
you didn't show up for lunch. Not that I expected you, though. I'd have
bet a pound of chocolates you wouldn't come."
Jean was content to say nothing and let herself be mothered. Amy showed
no trace of fatigue. She had changed her black blouse for a white one
of some soft fabric, and looked as fresh and pink-cheeked as if she had
idled the live-long day.
"Now for the pick-me-up," she said briskly, after making Jean snug
among the pillows; and what with a tiny kettle and a spirit-lamp, some
sugar which she rummaged from a bureau drawer, and a little milk from
the natural refrigerator of the window-sill, she concocted in no time a
really savory cup of tea.
Then, only, Jean found voice.
"Did you know all the time," she demanded, "that Meyer &
Schwarzschild's is no better than a sweat-shop?"
"I worked there a year," Amy returned sententiously. "I'm not saying it
was as bad all along as now. It was as decent as any at first, and I
hear that even now the room where the cutters work is pretty fair."
"Does Miss Archer know? But that's impossible."
"Of course she doesn't. And, though you mayn't believe it, old Mr.
Meyer doesn't know either. You saw what he is! It's only hospitals and
orphan asylums he thinks about. He totters down to business for about
an hour a week, and if he ever pokes his dear old nose into one of the
workrooms, it's early in the morning before the air gets so thick you
could slice it."
"But his partner--Schwarzschild? Where is he?"
"Dead. They keep the name because the firm is an old one. It's all
Meyer now, and that doesn't mean Jacob Meyer, Sr., but Jake. You
probably saw Jake. He has tomato-colored lips and an affectionate
disposition."
Jean shivered.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"How could I? Everything was settled before I knew you were going
there. Anyhow, it's a living while you are hunting something better.
I'm in hopes to get you in where I am. I spoke to a floor-walker I know
to-day. My department is full, but they'll probably need more help
downstairs for the Christmas rush."
"That would be merely temporary."
"Most every place is temporary till they size you up. If you're what
they want, they'll keep you on after the holidays, never fear. You may
have to take less money to begin with than you get now, but it will be
easier earned. Any old thing is better than Jake Meyer's joint, _I_
think."
This hope carried Jean through the three ensuing days. The conditions
at the cloak-factory were at no time better--in fact, once or twice,
when it rained and the girls came with damp clothing, they were worse;
but she omitted no more meals, and after the second day accustomed
herself to the steady treadmill of the machine.
At luncheon, Friday, Amy had news.
"Come up to the store after you stop work to-night," she directed.
"Beginning to-day, we keep open longer. Take the elevator to the fourth
floor."
"There's a place for me?"
"I'm not saying that. I spoke to my friend, the floor-walker,
again--he's in the toy department--and he told me to bring you round."
Jean found the vast establishment easily. The difficulty would have
been to miss it. Pushing her way through the holiday shoppers crowding
the immense ground-floor, she wormed into an elevator, got out as Amy
bade, and, after devious wanderings in a wonderful garden of millinery,
came finally upon her friend's special province and Amy herself.
Or was it Amy? She looked twice before deciding. It was not so much
the costly garment, a thing of silks, embroideries, and laces, which
effected the transformation,--Jean expected something of the kind,--as
it was the actress in Amy herself, which impelled her to play the part
the costume implied. With eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed, shoulders
erect, she was not Amy Jeffries, cloak-model, but a child of luxury
apparelled for the opera or the ball.
"Did she buy it?" Jean asked, when, free at last, Amy perceived her
waiting and came to her.
Amy sighed dolefully.
"Yes; it's gone," she said. "You can't imagine how I hate to lose it.
It had come to seem like my very own."
Jean could not conceive Amy in an occupation more congenial, and
wished heartily that as enviable a fortune might fall to her.
"It seems easy work," she said. "What do they require of a cloak-model?"
"A thirty-six inch bust, at least, for a starter. Did I ever tell you
that they call us by our bust measures? We never hear our own names.
I'm Thirty-six; that big girl with the red hair is Thirty-eight; and so
it goes. Then you must have good proportions and a stylish carriage,
and be attractive generally," she added, naïvely regarding her trim
reflection in the nearest pier-glass.
At this point "Thirty-eight" approached, and Amy introduced her,
saying:--
"My friend here thinks she'd like to be a cloak-model. 'Tisn't all
roses, is it?"
The red-haired girl gave the indulgent smile of experience.
"Wholesale or retail, it's harder than it looks," she declared. "I
don't mean displaying gowns so much as the side issues. Why, the amount
of dieting, lacing, and French heels some models put up with to keep in
form is something awful. Give me the retail trade, though. I'd rather
deal with shopping cranks than buyers."
"I suppose some of the buyers are fresh," Amy demurely remarked.
"_Some!_ Better say one out of every two," retorted Thirty-eight,
tersely. "I know what I'm talking about. I was a display model in
wholesale houses for three years--showing evening costumes, too! Oh, I
know buyers! A decent girl simply has to make herself a dummy, that's
all. She can't afford to have eyes and ears and feelings."
It was now quite the closing hour, and Amy conducted Jean to a lower
floor which looked like Kriss Kringle's own kingdom. They came upon
the floor-walker, frowning portentously at an atom of a cash-girl
who had stopped to play with a toy which she should have had wrapped
immediately for a suburban customer; but he smoothed his wrinkled front
at sight of Amy, with whom he seemed on excellent terms. Jean looked
for a rigid inquiry into her qualifications, but after some mention
of a reference, which Amy forestalled by glibly offering her own, Mr.
Rose merely told her to report for trial Monday, at six dollars a week,
remarking in the same breath that she had a heart-breaking pair of eyes.
Jean was puzzled.
"Do they take on everybody with no more ceremony than that?" she asked,
as they made their way out. "It seems a slack way of doing things."
Amy laughed gayly.
"Not much! In some stores--most, I guess--the superintendent does the
hiring. I had to face the manager of my department. You would have had
to see the manager down here, probably, if he wasn't sick. I knew this
when I struck Rosey-posy for the place. He took you as a personal favor
to me, or that's what he said, for he's rushing me a bit. For my part,
I think your heart-breaking eyes did it. You don't seem to realize it,
but you're a mighty handsome girl. I didn't half appreciate it when
you wore the refuge uniform. Don't blush! You'll get used to it. Trust
the men to tell you. Anyhow, you've got your chance and can snap your
fingers at Meyer & Schwarzschild."
"I'll tell them to-morrow morning."
"Better wait till to-morrow night after you've drawn your pay,"
counselled Amy, sagely. "Then you needn't listen to any more back talk
than you please."
Jean followed this advice, giving the forewoman notice only when she
turned from the cashier's window with her hard-earned wage safe in her
grasp.
The Jewess bridled, her fat shoulders quivering.
"Place not good enough?" she queried tartly.
"I've a better one."
"With another cloak firm?"
"No; with a department store."
The forewoman smiled sarcastically.
"Don't you fool yourself that you'll be better off. Mr. Meyer! Mr.
Meyer!" she called, raising her voice as the son of the house made
his appearance in a doorway. "Here's another girl what's got the
department-store fever."
Jean shrank from further explanations, particularly with young Meyer,
but he bustled up at once and put the same questions as the forewoman.
"Which store is it?" he continued.
She told him, and wondered why he smirked.
"Does Amy Jeffries work there still?" he said.
"Yes."
"Seems to be prospering? Wears good clothes?"
"Yes."
Young Meyer leered again.
"Come round when you're sick of it," he invited. "Tell Amy, too. You're
both good cloak-makers."
She turned from his satyr-face, vaguely disquieted. His whole manner
was an evil innuendo. The girl with the freckles, who had called the
place a sweat-shop, went down with her in the freight-elevator and
walked beside her for a block, when they gained the street.
"I heard Jake chewin' the rag up there," she said. "Why didn't you cuff
his ears? Anybody'd know to look at you that no buyer got you _your_
position."
"What are you talking about?"
"You didn't catch on to what he was hintin'?"
"No."
The girl gave an incredulous exclamation.
"And maybe you don't know either how Amy Jeffries got her place?" she
added.
"She said a buyer for the firm saw her at Meyer & Schwarzschild's and
liked her looks."
"That's straight," grinned the sceptic.
Jean shook her impatiently by the arm.
"What _isn't_ straight?" she demanded. "You are the one hinting now.
What do you mean? Out with it!"
But the girl squirmed out of her grasp and darted laughing away.
"Ask Amy," she called.