"An' will ye tell me why?" asked Mrs. Snawdor.
"'Cause I ain't," said Nance, knowing the futility of argument.
Mrs. Snawdor lifted her hand to strike, but changed her mind. She was beginning to have a certain puzzled respect for her stepdaughter's decision of character.
After the children had been put to bed and Nance had cried over the smallest nightgown, no longer needed, she slipped down to the second floor and, pausing before the door behind which the sewing-machines were always whirring, gave a peculiar whistle. It was a whistle possible only to a person who boasted the absence of a front tooth, and it brought Ike Lavinski promptly to the door.
Ikey was a friend whom she regarded with mingled contempt and admiration—contempt because he was weak and undersized, admiration because he was the only person of her acquaintance who had ever had his name in the newspaper. On two occasions he had been among the honor students at the high school, and his family and neighbors regarded him as an intellectual prodigy.
"Say, Ikey," said Nance, "if you was me, an' had to make some money, an' didn't want to chuck school, what would you do?"
Ikey considered the matter. Money and education were the most important things in the world to him, and were not to be discussed lightly.
"If you were bigger," he said, sweeping her with a critical eye, "you might try sewing pants."
"Could I do it at night? How much would it pay me? Would yer pa take me on?" Nance demanded all in a breath.
"He would if he thought they wouldn't get on to it."