"You'll have to push up the stroke," he said. "Can't you see you lose time by changing your position so often? What makes you fidget so?" Nance set her teeth resolutely and held her tongue. But her Irish instinct always suffered from restraint and by the time the noon whistle blew, she was in a state of sullen resentment. The thought of her beloved Miss Stanley and what she would think of these surroundings brought a lump into her throat. "Come on over here," called Mag from a group of girls at the open window. "Don't you mind what Bean says. He's sore on any girl that won't eat outen his dirty hand. You 're as smart again as that other kid. I can tell right off if a girl's got gumption, an' if she's on the straight. "Chuck that Sunday-school dope," laughed a pretty, red-haired girl named Gert. "You git her in wrong with Bean, an' I wouldn't give a nickel fer her chance." "You ought to know," said Mag, drily. The talk ran largely to food and clothes, and Nance listened with growing dismay. It seemed that most of the girls lived in rooming houses and took their meals out. "Wisht I had a Hamberger," said Mag. "I ain't had a bite of meat fer a month. I always buy my shoes with meat money." "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 passed around that a big order had come in, and nobody 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 glass. "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.