"See here," he said, "I am going to kiss you or fire you. Which'll you have?"
Nance dodged his outstretched hand and reached the top step.
"You won't do neither!" she cried fiercely. "You can't fire me, because I fired myself ten minutes ago, and I wouldn't kiss you to stay in heaven, let alone a damned old bottle factory!"
It was the Nance of the slums who spoke—the Nance whose small bare fists had fought the world too long for the knuckles to be tender. She had drifted a long way from the carefully acquired refinements of Forest Home, but its influence, like a dragging anchor, still sought to hold her against the oncoming gales of life.
CHAPTER XIV
IDLENESS
When one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down diversions wherever they are offered. The necessity of draining the dregs of life before the wine is savored does not cultivate a discriminating taste. Nance saw in Birdie Smelts her one chance of escape from the deadly monotony of life, and she seized it with both hands. Birdie might not be approved of her seniors, but she was a disturbingly important person to her juniors. To them it seemed nothing short of genius for a girl, born as they were in the sordid environs of Calvary Alley, to side-step school and factory and soar away into the paradise of stage-land. When such an authority gives counsel, it is not to be ignored. Birdie's advice had been to quit the factory, and Nance had taken the plunge without any idea of what she was going to put in its place.
For some reason best known to herself, she never mentioned that episode in the factory yard to either Birdie or Dan Lewis. There were many things about Birdie that she did not like, and she knew only too well what Miss Stanley would have said. But then Miss Stanley wouldn't have approved of Mr. Demry and his dope, or Mrs. Snawdor and her beer, or Mag Gist, with her loud voice and coarse jokes. When one lives in Calvary Alley, one has to compromise; it is seldom the best or the next best one can afford, even in friends.
When Mrs. Snawdor heard that Nance had quit work, she was furious. Who was Nance Molloy, she wanted to know, to go and stick up her nose at a glass factory? There wasn't a bloomin' thing the matter with Clarke's. She'd begun in a factory an' look at her! What was Nance a-goin' to do? Run the streets with Birdie Smelts? It was bad enough, God knew, to have Snawdor settin' around like a tombstone, an' Fidy a-havin' a fit if you so much as looked at her, without havin' Nance eatin' 'em out of house an' home an' not bringin' in a copper cent. If she stayed at home, she'd have to do the work; that was all there was to it!
"Anybody'd think jobs happened around as regerlar as the rent man," she ended bitterly. "You'll see the day when you're glad enough to go back to the factory."