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 passing 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 Saturday
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 passing 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 advertisement which indulged in the glittering
generality, that "You get what you pay for."
It was not a place to inspire romance, yet every Saturday its benches
were crowded with boys and girls who had no place to visit except on
the street.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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