"Any time now," said Dan. "I'll take you into his office."
With a sinking heart, Nance followed them into the crowded room. The heat was stifling, and the air was full of stinging glass dust. All about them boys were running with red hot bottles on big asbestos shovels. She hated the place, and she hated Dan for not being glad to see her.
"They are the carrying-in boys," Dan explained, continuing to address all of his remarks to Mrs. Snawdor. "That's where I began. You wouldn't believe that those kids often run as much as twenty-two miles a day. Watch out there, boy! Be careful!"
But his warning came too late. One of the smaller youngsters had stumbled and dropped his shovel, and a hot bottle had grazed his leg, burning away a bit of the stocking.
"It's all right, Partner," cried Dan, springing forward, "You're not much hurt. I'll fix you up."
But the boy was frightened and refused to let him remove the stocking.
"Let me do it," begged Nance. "I can get it off without hurting him."
And while Dan held the child's leg steady, she bathed and bound it in a way that did credit to Doc's training. Only once daring the process did she look up, and then she was relieved to see instead of the stern face of a strange young man, the compassionate, familiar face of the old Dan she used to know.
The interview with the foreman was of brief duration. He was a thick-set, pimply-faced person whom Dan called Mr. Bean. He swept an appraising eye over the applicant, submitted a few blunt questions to Dan in an undertone, ignored Mrs. Snawdor's voluble comments, and ended by telling Nance to report for work the following week.
As Mrs. Snawdor and Nance took their departure, the former, whose thoughts seldom traveled on a single track, said tentatively:
"Dan Lewis has got to be real nice lookin' sence you seen him, ain't he?"
"Nothin' to brag on," said Nance, still smarting at his indifference. But as she turned the corner of the building, she stole a last look through the window to where Dan was standing at his fiery post, his strong, serious face and broad, bare chest lighted up by the radiance from the glory-hole.
It was with little enthusiasm that Nance presented herself at the factory on Monday morning, ready to enlist in what Bishop Bland called "the noble service of industry." Her work was in the finishing room where a number of girls were crowded at machines and tables, filing, clipping, and packing bottles. Her task was to take the screw-neck bottles that came from the leer, and chip and file their jagged necks and shoulders until all the roughness was removed. It was dirty work, and dangerous for unskilled hands, and she found it difficult to learn.