"It's foolishness," Mrs. Levy protested, rubbing her trachoma-eaten eyes.
But the excitement had caught the rest of the women. And when Jake returned, hatless and breathless, with a phlegmatic Irish policeman, he met all his women coming downstairs. In spite of his frenzied pleading, the policeman refused to arrest them, refused even to arrest Yetta.
"I'll take your number. I'll report you, if you don't arrest her. She's been making trouble."
"Aw! Go on, ye dirty little Jew. I'll smack your face, if ye talk back to me. And you women, move on. Don't stand around here making a noise or I'll run you in."
But on the next corner the group of women did stop. Where should they go? What should they do next?
"Nobody'll go back to work," Yetta said, "unless he'll take Mrs. Cohen, too, when she gets rested."
"I won't never get rested," the coughing woman said.
"Oh, yes, you will, sure," Mrs. Weinstein said. But everybody knew she was lying.
The girl whose sister was a skirt-finisher and who knew all about strikes took down the names and addresses of the twelve women. Mrs. Weinstein promised to look after Mrs. Cohen. And Yetta started uptown to the office of the Woman's Trade Union League. And all the long walk her heart was chanting a glad hosanna. She wasn't a speeder any more. She could look free people in the face.