As for the disagreeable experiences, which had once or twice been literally terrifying, the girl still grew sick at heart with rage and shame and fear that they might jeopardize her plans, when she thought of them. In their ruder aspects they were divisible into two classes. A number of young men, sometimes in groups of twos or threes, but more often furtively and alone, had offensively sought to make themselves at home in the store, and had even pounded on the door in the evening after it was shut and bolted; a somewhat larger number of rough factory-girls, or idlers of the factory-girl class, had come from time to time with the obvious intention of insulting her. These latter always appeared in gangs, and supported one another in cruel giggling and in coarse inquiries and remarks. After a few painfully futile attempts to meet and rebuff these hostile waves, Jessica gave up the effort, and arranged matters so that she could work in the living-room beyond, within call if she were needed, but out of the visual range of her persecutors. Lucinda encountered them instead, and gave homely but vigorous Rolands for their Olivers. It was in the interchange of these remarks that the chief danger, to the struggling little business lay, for if genuine customers heard them, why, there was an end to everything. It is not easy to portray the girl’s relief as week after week went by, and time brought not only no open scandal, but a marked diminution of annoyance. When Jessica was no longer visible, interest in the sport lagged. To come merely for the sake of baiting Lucinda was not worth the while. And when these unfriendly visits slackened, and then fell off almost altogether, Jessica hugged to her breast the notion that it was because these rough young people had softened toward and begun to understand and sympathize with her. It was the easier to credit this kindly hypothesis in that she had already won the suffrages of a considerable circle of working-girls. To explain how this came about would be to analyze many curious and apparently contradictory phases of untutored human nature, and to recount many harmless little stratagems and well-meant devices, and many other frankly generous words and actions which came from hearts not the less warm because they beat amid the busy whir of the looms, or throbbed to the time of the seamstress’s needle.