“Oh, yes. They are very fashionably dressed,” Helen told her. “But see! I am going to have a new dress myself. Uncle Starkweather gave me ten dollars.”
“Chee!” ejaculated Sadie. “Wouldn’t it give him a cramp in his pocket-book to part with so much mazouma?”
“Mazouma?”
“That’s Hebrew for money,” laughed Sadie. “But you do need a dress. Where did you get that thing you’ve got on?”
“Out home,” replied Helen. “I see it isn’t very fashionable.”
“Say! we got through sellin’ them things to greenies two years back,” declared Sadie.
“You haven’t been at work all that time; have you?” gasped the girl from the ranch.
“Sure. I got my working papers four years ago. You see, I looked a lot older than I really was, and comin’ across from the old country all us children changed our ages, so’t we could go right to work when we come here without having to spend all day in school. We had an uncle what come over first, and he told us what to do.”
Helen listened to this with some wonder. She felt perfectly safe with Sadie, and would have trusted her, if it were necessary, with the money she had hidden away in her closet at Uncle Starkweather’s; yet the other girl looked upon the laws of the land to which she had come for freedom as merely harsh rules to be broken at one’s convenience.
“Of course,” said Sadie, “I didn’t work on the sidewalk here at first. I worked back in Old Yawcob’s shop—making changes in the garments for fussy customers. I was always quick with my needle.