"His ma'd have a fit. I'll just roll 'em up, and take 'em home with me to-night and darn 'em by hand." She laughed at herself, a little shame-faced laugh, but tender, too.
She did darn them that night, in the twilight, and in the face of the wondering contempt of Myrt. Myrt dwelt across the hall in five-roomed affluence with her father and mother. She was one of the ten stenographers employed by the Slezak Film Company. There existed between the two women an attraction due to the law of opposites. Myrt was nineteen. She earned twelve dollars a week. She knew all the secrets of the moving picture business, but even that hideous knowledge had left her face unscarred. Myrt's twelve was expended wholly upon the embellishment of Myrt. Myrt was one of those asbestos young women upon whom the fires of life leave no mark. She regarded Martha Eggers, who dwelt in one room, in the rear, across the hall, with that friendly contempt which nineteen, cruelly conscious of its charms, bestows upon plain forty.
She strolled into Martha Eggers' room now to find that lady intent upon a white sock, darning needle in hand. She was working in the fast-fading light that came through her one window. Myrt, kimono-clad, stared at her in unbelief.
"Well, I've heard that when actors get a day off they go to the theater. I suppose it's the same idea. I should think you'd get enough darning and mending from eight A. M. to six P. M. without dragging it home with you."
"I'm doing it for a friend," said Martha, her head bent over her work.
"What's his name?"
"Eddie."
"Eddie what?"
Martha blushed, pricked her finger, bent lower. "Eddie—Eddie
Grant."
At the end of the next six weeks every pair of Eddie Grant's hose, heel and toe, bore the marks of Martha's workmanship. Then, quite suddenly, they ceased to appear. Had he gone back home, defeated? Had he moved to another neighborhood? Had he invested in a fresh supply of haberdashery? On Tuesday of the seventh week E. G.'s white hose appeared once more. Martha picked them from among the heap. Instantly she knew. Clumsily, painstakingly, they had been darned by a hand all unaccustomed to such work. A masculine hand, as plucky as it was awkward.