III
“Number, please?” She is anonymous, that inquirer. But behind her anonymity there is humanity. Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street caught a glimpse of her at six forty-five A. M.
She was up at five in the morning. She had a pang as she put on her check suit, slightly darker than her check coat lined with pink. Her little hat, however, was smart and new. Her mother cooked breakfast while she set the table. Then she walked to the Third Avenue “L” with her friend. They got off the express at Forty-second Street, rode to Fourth Avenue on the short spur line, and walked along Forty-second Street in time for them to do a brief window-shopping as they passed the shirtwaists at Forsythe’s. Her friend’s bronze shoes she envied as they crossed the little park back of the Library. On Sixth Avenue they inspected the window at Bernstein’s. A slight argument engrossed them. They hovered over the window, chirping not unlike the sparrows in Bryant Park. Then, in a flurry of punctuality, they raced for the telephone company to begin their “Number, please.”
An hour earlier laborers with dinner-pails had crossed Fifth Avenue, and hatless Polish girls on their way to scrub. By seven o’clock the negro porters and laborers were giving way to white-collar strap-hangers on the elevateds and in the subway. It was getting to be the hour of salesmen and salesgirls and office-boys and shop-subordinates and clerks. The girls back of the scenes at the milliner’s, they go up Fifth Avenue at seven, to take one side-street or another. The girl who sells you a toothbrush in the drug-store hurries by the shop windows, herself as neat as a model. Is it early? Myriads of men are pouring down already. Besides, “’S use of kickin’? If you don’t like it, you can walk out!”
The night-watchman is going home, and an old attendant from the Grand Central. “Tired, Pop?” “Yeh, p’tty tired.” “What right’ve you to git tired workin’ for a big corporation?” The oppressed wage-slave bellows, “Ha, ha.”