He proved to be pleasanter than I had expected after hearing all the girls behind the counter declaim against men of his cloth. He did become irritated when I refused to break a box of silk socks for him. When I explained that it was against the rules to deliver goods until after the coupons had been counted, he turned his back on me. He was so much better than some other customers who had fallen to my lot that I remonstrated with Nora for refusing to serve him. “Oh, I know’ em!” she replied impatiently. “See how sleek and fat and selfish he is! Last week one of ’em came to our flat and worried mother until she gave him the money she’d been saving for more than six months to get herself a pair of thick shoes.” “Much he cared what she was saving for,” the little Jewess chipped in. “My father keeps a butcher-shop, and whenever mother sees a rabbi coming she hides everything except the toughest cuts. They only take the best, and want ’em for nothing.” “Ministers are like everybody else,” the Protestant girl announced. “They’ve got to feather their own nests.” “What would your minister say to that?” I asked her. “My minister!” she scoffed. “He don’t know me from Adam’s cat. He never speaks to nobody off Fifth Avenue.” For years I had heard persons, men and women, declaim against the incomprehensible devotion of “shop-girls” to chocolate éclairs and gum-drops. Indeed only a few days before quitting the National Arts Club I overheard a high-priced music teacher declare that she lost all patience with “shop-girls” when she saw them lunching on a chocolate éclair instead of a bowl of oatmeal and milk, or of “good, nourishing soup.” My five weeks behind the counter furnished me with a proved solution to the problem. The first time I tried lunching on a bowl of oatmeal and milk I began to experience a most uncomfortable sensation under my apron before three o’clock. By five that sensation had become a sharp griping pain. The day following I tried soup. In the middle of the afternoon when Nora learned how I was suffering, she went scurrying around among the girls in various departments and returned with three gum-drops, which she made me eat. After that when I had ten cents or less to spend for lunch I invested in a chocolate éclair and gum-drops. Without a doubt such a diet does produce pale faces and a predisposition to tuberculosis. Experience taught me that it staves off the griping agony produced by hunger and standing on one’s feet longer than any other food to be had in New York City for the same money. When a girl’s wage is seven dollars a week, or less, ten cents a day is all she can spend for lunch.