Calvary Alley Part 20

"I git my hats with breakfasts," said another girl. "Fourteen breakfasts makes a dollar-forty. I kin buy a hat fer a dollar-forty-nine that's swell enough fer anybody."

"I gotta have my breakfast," said Mag. "Four cups of coffee ain't nothin' to me."

Gert got up and stretched herself impatiently.

"I'm sick an' tired of hearin' you all talk about eatin'. Mag's idea of Heaven is a place where you spend ten hours makin' money an' two eatin'

it up. Some of us ain't built like that. We got to have some fun as we go along, an' we're goin' to git it, you bet your sweet life, one way or the other."

Soon after work was resumed, word was pa.s.sed around that a big order had come in, and n.o.body was to quit work until it was made up. A ripple of sullen comment followed this announcement, but the girls bent to their tasks with feverish energy.

At two o'clock the other new girl standing next to Nance grew faint, and had to be stretched on the floor in the midst of the broken gla.s.s.

"She's a softie!" whispered Mag to Nance. "This ain't nothin' to what it is in hot weather."

The pain between Nance's shoulders was growing intolerable, and her cut fingers and aching feet made her long to cast herself on the floor beside the other girl and give up the fight. But pride held her to her task.

After what seemed to her an eternity she again looked at the big clock over the door. It was only three. How was she ever to endure three more hours when every minute now was an agony?

Mag heard her sigh and turned her head long enough to say:

"Hang yer arms down a spell; that kind of rests 'em. You ain't goin' to flop, too, are you?"

"Not if I can hold out."

"I knowed you was game all right," said Mag, with grim approval.

By six o'clock the last bottle was packed, and Nance washed the blood and dirt off her hands and forced her swollen, aching feet into her shoes.

She jerked her jacket and tam-o'-shanter from the long row of hooks, and half blind with weariness, joined the throng of women and girls that jostled one another down the stairs. Every muscle of her body ached, and her whole soul was hot with rebellion. She told herself pa.s.sionately that nothing in the world could induce her to come back; she was through with factory work forever.

As she limped out into the yard, a totally vanquished little soldier on the battle-field of industry, she spied Dan Lewis standing beside the tall gas-pipe, evidently waiting for somebody. He probably had a sweetheart among all these trooping girls; perhaps it was the pretty, red-haired one named Gert. The thought, dropping suddenly into a surcharged heart, brimmed it over, and Nance had to sweep her fingers across her eyes to brush away the tears.

And then:

"I thought I'd missed you," said Dan, quite as a matter of course, as he caught step with her and raised her umbrella.

Nance could have flung her tired arms about him and wept on his broad shoulder for sheer grat.i.tude. To be singled out, like that, before all the girls on her first day, to have a beau, a big beau, pilot her through the crowded streets and into Calvary Alley where all might see, was sufficient to change the dullest sky to rose and lighten the heart of the most discouraged.

On the way home they found little to say, but Nance's aching feet fairly tripped beside those of her tall companion, and when they turned Slap Jack's corner and Dan asked in his slow, deliberate way, "How do you think you are going to like the factory?" Nance answered enthusiastically, "Oh, I like it splendid!"

CHAPTER XIII

EIGHT TO SIX

Through that long, wet spring Nance did her ten hours a day, six days in the week and on the seventh washed her clothes and mended them. Her breaking in was a hard one, for she was as quick of tongue as she was of fingers, and her tirades against the monotony, the high speed, and the small pay were frequent and vehement. Every other week when Dan was on the night shift, she made up her mind definitely that she would stand it no longer.

But on the alternate weeks when she never failed to find him waiting at the gas-pipe to take her home, she thought better of it. She loved to slip in under his big cotton umbrella, when the nights were rainy, and hold to his elbow as he shouldered a way for her through the crowd; she liked to be a part of that endless procession of bobbing umbrellas that flowed down the long, wet, glistening street; best of all she liked the distinction of having a "steady" and the envious glances it brought her from the other girls.

Sometimes when they paused at a shop window, she caught her reflection in a mirror, and smiled approval at the bright face under the red tam. She wondered constantly if Dan thought she was pretty and always came to the conclusion that he did not.

From the time they left the factory until they saw the towering bulk of the cathedral against the dusk, Nance's chatter never ceased. She dramatized her experiences at the factory; she gave a lively account of the doings of the Snawdor family; she wove tales of mystery around old Mr. Demry. She had the rare gift of enhancing every pa.s.sing moment with something of importance and interest.

Dan listened with the flattering homage a slow, taciturn nature often pays a quick, vivacious one. It was only when problems concerning the factory were touched upon that his tongue lost its stiffness. Under an unswerving loyalty to his employers was growing a discontent with certain existing conditions. The bad lighting system, the lack of ventilation, the employment of children under age, were subjects that rendered him eloquent. That cruel month spent in the reformatory had branded him so deeply that he was supersensitive to the wrongs of others, and spent much of his time in planning ways and means to better conditions.

"Don't you ever want a good time, Dan?" Nance asked. "Don't you ever want to sort of let go and do something reckless?"

"No; but I'll tell you what I do want. I want a' education. I've a good mind to go to night school and try to pick up some of the things I didn't get a chance to learn when I was a kid."

Nance scoffed the idea; school was almost invisible to her from the giddy height of sixteen. "Let's go on a bat," she urged. "Let's go out and see something."

So on the four following Sundays Dan took her to see the library, the reservoir, the city hall, and the jail. His ideas of recreation had not been cultivated.

The time in the week to which she always looked forward was Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Then they got out early, and if the weather was fine, they would stop in Post-Office Square and, sitting on one of the iron benches, watch the pa.s.sing throng. There was something thrilling in the jostling crowds, and the electric signs flashing out one by one down the long gay thoroughfare.

Post-Office Square, at the end of the day, was always littered with papers and trash. In its center was a battered, weather kiosk, and facing it, was a huge electric advertis.e.m.e.nt which indulged in the glittering generality, that "You get what you pay for."

It was not a place to inspire romance, yet every Sat.u.r.day its benches were crowded with boys and girls who had no place to visit except on the street.

Through the long spring dusks, with their tender skies and silver stars, Nance and Dan kept company, unconcerned with the past or the future, wholly content with the May-time of the present. At a word or touch from Dan, Nance's inflammable nature would have taken fire but Dan, under Mrs.

Purdy's influence, was pa.s.sing through an acute stage of religious conversion, and all desires of the flesh were sternly repressed by that new creed to which he was making such heroic efforts to conform. With the zeal of a new convert, he considered it his duty to guard his small companion against all love-making, including his own.

Nance at an early age had developed a protective code that even without Dan's forbidding looks and constant surveillance might have served its purpose. Despite the high spirits and free speech that brought her so many admiring glances from the boys in the factory, it was soon understood that the "Molloy kid" was not to be trifled with.

"Say, little Sister, I like your looks," Bean had said to her one morning when they were alone in the hall. "It's more than I do yours," Nance had answered coolly, with a critical glance at his pimply nose.

As summer came on, the work, which at first was so difficult, gradually became automatic, and while her shoulders always ached, and her feet were always tired, she ceased for the most part to think of them. It was the confinement that told upon her, and when the long bright days came, and she thought of Forest Home and its woods and streams, her restlessness increased. The stifling finishing room, the endless complaints of the girls, and the everlasting crunching of gla.s.s under foot were at times almost unendurable.

One day when the blue of the sky could not be dimmed even by factory smoke, and the air was full of enticement, Nance slipped out at the noon hour, and, watching her chance, darted across the factory yard out through the stables, to the road beyond. A decrepit old elm-tree, which had evidently made heroic effort to keep tryst with the spring, was the one touch of green in an otherwise barren landscape. Scrambling up the bank, Nance flung herself on the ground beneath its branches, and between the bites of a dry sandwich, proceeded to give vent to some of her surplus vitality.

"Arra, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain," she sang at the top of her voice.

"And sit down until the moon comes out again, Sure a cup of tay I'll brew, just enough for me and you, We'll snuggle up together, and we'll talk about the weather, Do you hear? Barney dear, there's a queer Sort of feelin' round me heart, that gives me pain, And I think the likes o' me could learn to like the likes o' ye, Arra, come in, Barney McKane, out of the rain!"

So absorbed was she in trying operatic effects that she did not notice an approaching automobile until it came to a stop in the road below.

"Hi there, Sembrich!" commanded a fresh young voice, the owner of which emphasized his salute with his horn, "are you one of the factory kids?"

Nance rose to a sitting posture.

"What's it to you?" she asked, instantly on the defensive.

"I want to know if Mr. Clarke's come in. Have you seen him?"

"No, indeed," said Nance, to whom Mr. Clarke was as vague as the Deity; then she added good-naturedly, "I'll go find out if you want me to."

The young man shut off his engine and, transferring two struggling pigeons from his left hand to his right, dismounted.