The striking shirtwaist-maker, who had spent a long day on picket-duty before a Waverley Place factory, looked up with round eyes calmly serious. "That is what I am wondering all the time," she replied. Katie made an impatient movement of her hand. "Och, now," she generously protested, "it's all right for me to growl, because I've got a job. I don't count, an' it's just me habit. But you mustn't do it, me dear." "I am not complaining; I am just honestly wondering, that's all." "But if the worst came, you could go back to work, you know." Carrie's face was all surprise. "And turn traitor to my friends striking in my own and all the other factories?" she asked. "Oh, no; you would be the last to do it yourself, Katie. I would rather go on the street." "You don't mean that, darlin'." "I do mean it. If I went on the street, I would hurt myself, but if I did the other thing I would hurt all the other girls in the union." She spoke quietly, but with infinite conviction, and Katie knew the forces that had brought about this state of mind. The widespread strike, though it still continued, was a failure. Public sentiment had never been aroused; the employers had succeeded in securing non-union labor, whose wages they were, even now, securely reducing, and whose privileges--granted to entice them to work--they were curbing; their political powers earned them the armed assistance of the law; and the strikers' ranks, though but little thinned by desertion, were steadily decreased by poverty, by the necessity of the girls to find other sorts of work, by illness, and, now that the cold autumn had set in, by death. Carrie was underfed, scantily clothed, penniless, and Katie, remembering these things, found herself without reply. Had she needed further example of the pressure of conditions upon her kind, she could have found it in an incident in the shop on the day following. A bull-necked young man, with ruddy cheeks and a certainty of manner that spoke as loudly in his eyes and his scarf-pin as in his voice, sauntered up to the silk-stocking counter, where she happened then to be stationed, and began turning over the wares displayed. "Have you been waited on?" inquired Katie. "No," said the young man, looking at her steadily; "but I'd like you to wait on me. Are you busy?" Katie said nothing, but stood there. The young man said nothing. Katie began to finger the boxes before her, but she felt that the young man was looking only at her. "What quality would you like me to show you?" she asked. "Well," parried the customer, "what quality do you like?" She shot one glance at him: he was still looking at her. "We have only the best at this counter," she answered, with a slight flush. "You'll be findin' the cheaper the sixth aisle to your right." But the young man only laughed with unconcern, and continued to keep his gaze on her lowered Irish blue eyes. "I can afford the best of everything," he said.