"Gorman's ain't a nice place," insisted Dan. "I wish you'd come on up to some of the church meetings with me. I could take you lots of times if you'd go."
But Nance refused persistently to be inveigled into the religious fold. The very names of Epworth League, and prayer meeting made her draw a long face.
"You don't care whether we see each other or not!" she accused Dan, hotly.
"I do," he said earnestly, "but it seems like I never have time for anything. The work at the factory gets heavier all the time. But I'm getting on, Nance; they give me another raise last month."
"Everybody's getting on," cried Nance bitterly, "but me! You and Ike and Birdie! I work just as hard as you all do, and I haven't got a blooming thing to show for it. What I make sewing pants don't pay for what I eat. Sometimes I think I'll have to go back to the finishing room."
"Not if I can help it!" said Dan, emphatically. "There must be decent jobs somewhere for girls. Suppose I take you out to Mrs. Purdy's on Sunday, and see if she knows of anything. She's all the time asking me about you."
The proposition met with little enthusiasm on Nance's part. It was Mrs. Purdy who had got Dan into the church and persuaded him not to go to the theater or learn how to dance. It was Mrs. Purdy who took him home with her to dinner every Sunday after church and absorbed the time that used to be hers. But the need for a job was too pressing for Nance to harbor prejudices. Instead of sewing for the Lavinskis that night, she sewed for herself, trying to achieve a costume from the old finery bequeathed her by Birdie Smelts.
You would scarcely have recognized Dan that next Sunday in his best suit, with his hair plastered down, and a very red tie encircling a very high collar. To be sure Dan's best was over a year old, and the brown-striped shirt-front was not what it seemed, but his skin was clean and clear, and there was a look in his earnest eyes that bespoke an untroubled conscience.
Mrs. Purdy received them in her cozy fire-lit sitting-room and made Nance sit beside her on the sofa, while she held her hand and looked with mild surprise at her flaring hat and cheap lace collar.
"Dan didn't tell me," she said, "how big you had grown or--or how pretty."