"Disease! What do you mean?"
"Well, consumption, for instance. It isn't bronchitis, as she thinks, that ails the woman next machine to you. I could tell you other things, but what's the use! You won't stop here any longer than I will, and that's just long enough to find a better job."
The afternoon lapsed somehow. Once, a youngish, overdressed man with blustering manners and thick, bright-red lips came into their workroom and told the forewoman that a certain order must be rushed. He idled near Jean's machine for an interval, under pretence of examining her work, but he mainly looked her in the face. As he passed down the aisles, he touched this girl and that familiarly. Those so favored were without exception pretty, and they usually simpered under his attentions, though one or two grimaced afterward. When he had gone, Jean's thin-cheeked neighbor told her between coughs that this was the younger Meyer.
She met him again when she passed the offices in leaving for the night, and he again stared fixedly, wearing his repulsive, scarlet smile. She jumped at the conclusion that old Mr. Meyer had mentioned that she came from a reformatory, and hurried by with burning cheeks. The night air refreshed her a little, but the way home seemed endless, and the three flights from Mrs. St. Aubyn's door to the dormered bedroom were appalling in prospect. She entered faint with hunger and fagged with a thoroughness she had not known since the earlier days in the refuge laundry.
Amy sprang up from a novel.
"Don't say a word," she charged. "I suspicioned how it would be when you didn't show up for lunch. Not that I expected you, though. I'd have bet a pound of chocolates you wouldn't come."
Jean was content to say nothing and let herself be mothered. Amy showed no trace of fatigue. She had changed her black blouse for a white one of some soft fabric, and looked as fresh and pink-cheeked as if she had idled the live-long day.
"Now for the pick-me-up," she said briskly, after making Jean snug among the pillows; and what with a tiny kettle and a spirit-lamp, some sugar which she rummaged from a bureau drawer, and a little milk from the natural refrigerator of the window-sill, she concocted in no time a really savory cup of tea.
Then, only, Jean found voice.
"Did you know all the time," she demanded, "that Meyer & Schwarzschild's is no better than a sweat-shop?"