The window of the Elite Hand Laundry was a boast. On a line strung from side to side hung snowy, creaseless examples of the ironer's art. Pale blue tissue paper, stuffed into the sleeves and front of lace and embroidery blouses cunningly enhanced their immaculate virginity. White piqué skirts, destined to be grimed by the sands of beach and tee, dangled like innocent lambs before the slaughter. Just behind this starched and glistening ambush one glimpsed the bent head and the nimble fingers of Martha Eggers, first aid to the unwed. As she sat weaving, in and out, in and out, she was a twentieth century version of any one of the Fates, with the Klinger darner and mender substituted for distaff and spindle. There was something almost humanly intelligent in the workings of Martha's machine. Under its glittering needle she would shove a sock whose heel bore a great, jagged, gaping wound. Your home darner, equipped only with mending egg, needle, and cotton, would have pronounced it fatal. But Martha's modern methods of sock surgery always saved its life. In and out, back and forth, moved the fabric under the needle. And slowly, the wound began to heal. Tack, tack, back and forth. The operation was completed. "If I see you many more Mondays," Martha would say, grimly, tossing it into the heap at her side, "there won't be anything left of the original cloth. I should think people would realize that this laundry darns socks, but it doesn't manufacture 'em." Before the advent of the ingenious mending machine I suppose more men than would care to admit it married largely because they grew so tired of seeing those eternal holes grinning back at them from heel and toe, and of feeling for absent buttons in a hastily donned shirt. The Elite laundry owed much of its success to the fact that it advertised alleviation for these discomforts. If you had known Martha as I know her you would have found a certain pathos in the thought of this spare spinster performing for legions of unknown unseen men those homely, intimate tasks that have long been the duty of wife or mother. For Martha had no men-folks. Martha was one of those fatherless, brotherless, husbandless women who, because of their state, can retain their illusions about men. She had never known the tragedy of setting forth a dinner only to have hurled at her that hateful speech beginning with, "I had that for lunch." She had never seen a male, collarless, bellowing about the house for his laundry. She had never beheld that soul-searing sight--a man in his trousers and shirt, his suspenders dangling, his face lathered, engaged in the unbecoming rite of shaving.