I finally settled down to eating lunch daily between Tessie and Mrs. Lewis, the Englishwoman. We do so laugh at one another's jokes. I know everything that ever happened to Tessie and Mrs. Lewis from the time they were born; all the heartbreaking stories of the first homesick months in this my land, all the jobs they have labored at. Mrs. Lewis has worked “in the mills” ever since she was born, it would seem, first in England, later in Michigan. Tessie and her husband mostly have hired out together in this country for housework, and she likes that better than packing chocolates standing up, she says. Mrs. Lewis is—well, she's Indian summer, too, along with Lillian and Sadie and Fannie, only she makes no bones about it (nor does black Fannie, for that matter). Mrs. Lewis is thin and wrinkled, with a skimpy little dust cap on her head. Her nose is very long and pointed, her teeth very false. Her eyes are always smiling. She loves to laugh. One day we were talking about unemployment.
“Don't you know, it's awful in Europe,” volunteers Mrs. Lewis.
“One hundred thousand unemployed in Paris alone—saw it in headlines this morning,” I advance.
“Paris?” said Tessie. “Paris? Where's Paris?”
If one could always be so sure of one's facts.
Mrs. Lewis wheels about in her chair, looks at me sternly over the top of her spectacles, and:
“Do you know, they're telling me that's a pretty fast country, that France.”
“No—no I haven't got the details _yet_”—she clasped her chin with her hand—“but 'fast' was the word I heard used.”
Irene is a large, florid, bleached blonde. She worked at the table behind me about four days. “Y'know”—Irene has a salon air—“y'know, I jus' can't stand steppen on these soft chocolates. Nobody knows how I suffer. It just goes through me like a knife.” She spent a good part of each day scraping off the bottoms of her French-heeled shoes with a piece of cardboard. It evidently was too much for her nerves. She is no more.
The sign reads, “Saturdays 8-12.” When Saturday came around Ida hollered down the room, “Everybody's gotta work to-day till five.” The howl that went up! I supposed “gotta” meant “gotta.” But Lena came up to me.
“You gonna work till five? Don't you do it. We had to strike to get a Saturday half holiday. Now they're tellin' us we gotta work till five—pay us for it, o' course. If enough girls'll stay, pretty soon they'll be sayin: 'See? What ud we tell ya? The girls want to work Saturday afternoons'; and they'll have us back regular again.” In the end not a girl in our room stayed, and Ida wrung her hands.