“Dont be in such a hurry, Jimps.... And there’s Martin. What about him?”
“I can scrape up enough money for him occasionally, poor little kid.”
“I make more than you do, Jimps.... You shouldnt do that yet.”
“I know. I know. Dont I know it?”
They sat looking at each other without speaking. Their eyes burned from looking at each other. Suddenly Jimmy wanted terribly to be asleep, not to remember anything, to let his head sink into blackness, as into his mother’s lap when he was a kid.
“Well I’m going home.” He gave a little dry laugh. “We didn’t think it’d all go pop like this, did we?”
“Goodnight Jimps,” she whined in the middle of a yawn. “But things dont end.... If only I weren’ so terribly sleepy.... Will you put out the light?”
He groped his way in the dark to the door. Outside the arctic morning was growing gray with dawn. He hurried back to his room. He wanted to get into bed and be asleep before it was light.
A long low room with long tables down the middle piled with silk and crêpe fabrics, brown, salmonpink, emeraldgreen. A smell of snipped thread and dress materials. All down the tables bowed heads auburn, blond, black, brown of girls sewing. Errandboys pushing rolling stands of hung