The pain between Nance's shoulders was growing intolerable, and her cut fingers and aching feet made her long to cast herself on the floor beside the other girl and give up the fight. But pride held her to her task. After what seemed to her an eternity she again looked at the big clock over the door. It was only three. How was she ever to endure three more hours when every minute now was an agony?
Mag heard her sigh and turned her head long enough to say:
"Hang yer arms down a spell; that kind of rests 'em. You ain't goin' to flop, too, are you?"
"Not if I can hold out."
"I knowed you was game all right," said Mag, with grim approval.
By six o'clock the last bottle was packed, and Nance washed the blood and dirt off her hands and forced her swollen, aching feet into her shoes. She jerked her jacket and tam-o'-shanter from the long row of hooks, and half blind with weariness, joined the throng of women and girls that jostled one another down the stairs. Every muscle of her body ached, and her whole soul was hot with rebellion. She told herself passionately that nothing in the world could induce her to come back; she was through with factory work forever.
As she limped out into the yard, a totally vanquished little soldier on the battle-field of industry, she spied Dan Lewis standing beside the tall gas-pipe, evidently waiting for somebody. He probably had a sweetheart among all these trooping girls; perhaps it was the pretty, red-haired one named Gert. The thought, dropping suddenly into a surcharged heart, brimmed it over, and Nance had to sweep her fingers across her eyes to brush away the tears.
And then:
"I thought I'd missed you," said Dan, quite as a matter of course, as he caught step with her and raised her umbrella.
Nance could have flung her tired arms about him and wept on his broad shoulder for sheer gratitude. To be singled out, like that, before all the girls on her first day, to have a beau, a big beau, pilot her through the crowded streets and into Calvary Alley where all might see, was sufficient to change the dullest sky to rose and lighten the heart of the most discouraged.