After all, why wasn't a man a girl vamped in the Subway the safest kind? Where did working girls get a chance to meet men, anyhow? About the only place was the dance hall, and goodness knows what kind of men you did meet at a dance hall. They were apt to be the kind to make questionable husbands; like as not they were “sports.” But the Subway! Now there you were more likely to pick up with the dependable kind. Every girl at the table knew one or several married couples whose romances had begun on the Subway, and “every one of 'em turned out happy.” One girl told of a man she could have vamped the Sunday before in the Subway, but he was too sportily dressed and she got scared and quit in the middle. The other girls all approved her conduct. Each expressed deep suspicion of the “sporty” man. Each supported the Subway romance. I withdrew my slur on the same. * * * * * A guilty feeling came over me as the day for leaving the laundry approached. Miss Cross and I had become very friendly. We planned to do all sorts of things together. Our floor was such a companionable, sociable place. It didn't seem square to walk off and leave those girls, black and white, who were my friends. In the other factories I just disappeared as suddenly as I came. After a few days I could not stand it and penned a jiggly note to Miss Cross. Unexpectedly, I was going to have to move to Pennsylvania (that was true, for Christmas vacation). I hated to leave her and the girls, etc., etc. I was her loving friend, “Constance,” alias “Sunbeam.” IV _In a Dress Factory_ Fingers poke through cold holes in the wool mittens; the old coat with two buttons gone flaps and blows about the knees; dirt, old papers, spiral upward on the chill gusts of a raw winter day. Close your eyes, duck your head, and hurry on. Under one arm is clutched the paper bag with lunch and the blue-checked apron. Under the other the old brown-leather bag. In the old brown-leather bag is an old black purse. In the old black purse are fifty-five cents, a key, and a safety pin. In the old brown bag are also two sticks of Black Jack chewing gum, a frayed handkerchief, and the crumpled list of possibilities. If you should lose the list! That list was copied from the Sunday _World_—from the “Female Help Wanted, Miscellaneous.” The future looked bright Sunday. Now after four attempts to land jobs had ended in being turned down cold, the future did not look bright at all. Because, you understand, we are going on the assumption that the old black purse in the old brown bag with fifty-five cents and a key and a safety pin were all that stood between us and—well, a number of dismal things. Which was fifty-five cents and a key and a safety pin more than some folk had that Monday morning in New York.