“All right, only my feet are awful tired. Don't your feet never get tired?
”Shure, child, an' what good would it do for my feet to get tired when they're all I got to stand on? An' did you ever try settin' nine hours a day? Shure an' that would be the death of anybody.
Mrs. Reilly's indoor sport was marrying the sixth floor off. Poor Lucia's widow's weeds of five weeks were no obstacle to Mrs. Reilly. She frequently made the whole floor giggle, carrying on an animated Irish conversation with Lucia over the prospects of a second marriage—or rather, a monologue it was, since Lucia never knew she was being talked to. If ever there was a body with a ”sex complex it was old Mrs. Reilly! When I asked her once why she didn't get busy marrying off herself, she called back: “The Lord be praised! And didn't I get more than enough of the one man I had?”
At least twice a week Mrs. Reilly saw a ghost, and she would tell us about it in the morning. She laughed then, and we all laughed, but you could easily picture the poor old fearful soul meeting that inevitable 2 A.M. guest, quaking over it in her lonely bed. Once the ghost was extra terrifying. “It may have been the banama sauce,” admitted Mrs. Reilly. And Mrs. Reilly's feet did hurt often. She used sometimes to take off her worn shoes and try tying her feet up in cardboards.
The other workers on our floor were Mabel and Mary, two colored girls who finished off slight rough edges in the press ironing and folded everything; Edna, a Cuban girl who did handkerchiefs on the mangle; Annie, the English girl, lately married to an American. She had an inclosure of shelves to work in and there she did the final sorting and wrapping of family wash. Annie was the most superior person on our floor.
And Miss Cross. In face, form, neatness, and manners Miss Cross could have held her own socially anywhere. But according to orthodox standards Miss Cross's grammar was faulty. She had worked always in our laundry, beginning as a hand ironer. She knew the days when hours were longer than nine and pay lower than fourteen dollars a week. She remembered when the family floor had to iron Saturdays until 10 and 11 at night, instead of getting off at 12.45, as we did now. They stood it in those days; but how? As it was now, not a girl on our floor but whose feet ached more or less by 4 or 4.30. Ordinarily we stopped at 5.30. Everyone knew how everyone else felt that last half hour. During a week with any holiday the girls had to work till 6.15 every night, and Saturday afternoon. They all said—we discussed it early one morning—that in such weeks they could iron scarcely anything that last hour, their feet burned so.
The candy factory was hard—one stood nine hours, but the work was very light.
The brassworks was hard—one sat, but the foot exercise was wearying and the seat fearfully uncomfortable.
Ironing was hardest—one stood all day and used the feet for hard pressure besides. Yet I was sorry to leave the laundry!
Perhaps it was just as well for me that Lucia could not talk English. She might have used it on me, and already the left ear was talked off by Irma. Miss Cross stood for just so much conversation, according to her mood. Even if she were feeling very spry, our sixth-floor talk could become only so general and lively before Miss Cross would call: “Girls! girls! not so much noise!” If it were late in the afternoon that would quiet us for the day—no one had enough energy to start up again.