The streets she retraced were now thronged with masculine wage-earners lounging and smoking in the doorways of their various places of employment. All paid her the tribute of a stare, and some made audible comments on her hair or eyes, or what they termed her shape. Her own doorway was also crowded. These idlers were, for the most part, girls from the many garment-manufactories of one sort and another which the great building housed; but a man stood here and there, either the leader or the butt of some horse-play. One of the young women who had scrutinized Amy in the elevator nodded to her and seemed about to speak, but Jean felt too heart-sick for words, and returned at once to her appointed corner in the hive, where, although it still lacked something of one o'clock, she again sat down to her machine. The air was better, for the windows had been thrown open during the noon-hour, but the room was in consequence very chill, and her fellow-workers, now drifting back in twos and threes, grumbled as they came. Among them was the girl who had greeted her below, and looking at her with more interest Jean read kindness in her freckled face. Their eyes met again, with a half-smile, and the girl edged down the narrow lane for a moment's gossip. "You'll find it better to take a bite of lunch, even if you don't hanker for it," she observed. "How do you know I haven't?" Jean asked. "That's easy. For one reason, I seen you walkin' in Washington Square. For another, a green hand here don't never want lunch. Not used to this kind of thing, are you?" "To the work, yes; not the noise, the bad air." "Where'd you work last?" "In a small town," she eluded. "That's different. You don't have the sweat-shop in the country, I guess." "Sweat-shop!" Jean had heard that sinister term before. "Is that what they call Meyer & Schwarzschild's?" The girl laughed at her simplicity. "I call it one," she rejoined, "even if it is on Broadway. Don't low wages and dirt and bad air and disease make a sweat-shop?" "Disease! What do you mean?" "Well, consumption, for instance. It isn't bronchitis, as she thinks, that ails the woman next machine to you. I could tell you other things, but what's the use! You won't stop here any longer than I will, and that's just long enough to find a better job." The afternoon lapsed somehow. Once, a youngish, overdressed man with blustering manners and thick, bright-red lips came into their workroom and told the forewoman that a certain order must be rushed. He idled near Jean's machine for an interval, under pretence of examining her work, but he mainly looked her in the face. As he passed down the aisles, he touched this girl and that familiarly. Those so favored were without exception pretty, and they usually simpered under his attentions, though one or two grimaced afterward. When he had gone, Jean's thin-cheeked neighbor told her between coughs that this was the younger Meyer.