Zarelda was timid about the elevator; but that noon she sprang upon it and giving the rope a jerk went spinning down to the ground. As she entered the marking-room one of the overseers saw her. “What!” he exclaimed, “Did you come down that elevator, ’Reldy? I thought you had more sense ’n some o’ the other girls. Why, it ain’t safe! You’re liable to get killed on it.”
“I don’t care,” said Zarelda, with a short, contemptuous laugh. “I’d just as soon go over the falls in an Indian dug-out.”
“You must want to shuffle off mighty bad,” said the overseer. Then he added kindly, for he and all the other overseers liked her—“What’s got into you, ’Reldy? Anything ail you?”
“No,” said the girl; “nothin’ ails me.” But his kind tone had brought sudden, stinging tears to her eyes.
She went on silently to the stove and set her bucket upon it. It contained thick vegetable soup, which, with soda crackers, constituted her dinner. She sat down to watch it, stirring it occasionally with a tin spoon. Twenty other girls were crowding around the stove. Em was among them. Zarelda saw the big red rose lolling in her girdle. She turned her eyes resolutely away from it, only to find them going back again and again.
“Hey! Where ’d you get your rose at, Em Brackett?” cried one of the girls.
“Jim Sheppard gave it to her,” trebled another, before Em could reply. “I see him have it pinned onto his flannel shirt before the whistle blew.”
“Jim Sheppard! Oh, my!”
There was a subdued titter behind Zarelda’s back. She stirred the soup without lifting her eyes. “She went livid, though, an’ then she went white!” one of the girls who read yellow novels declared afterward, tragically.
“Well,” said Matt Wilson, sitting down on a bench and commencing to eat a great slice of bread thinly covered with butter, “who went to the dance up at Stringtown las’ night?”