"Why, the poor kid! The poor little kid! Lost his job for six weeks, and did his own washing and mending."
That night she picked out the painfully woven stitches and replaced them with her own exquisite workmanship.
Eddie's new job was evidently a distinct advance. The old socks disappeared altogether. They had been darned until each one resembled a mosaic. In their place appeared an entirely new set, with nothing but the E. G. inked upon them by the laundry to distinguish them from hundreds of others. Sometimes Martha missed them entirely. then, suddenly, E. G. blossomed into silk, with clocking up the side, and Martha knew that he was in love. She found herself wondering what kind of girl she was, and whether the woman in the little town that was Back Home to Eddie would have approved of her. One day there appeared a pair of lovesick lavenders, but they never again bloomed. Evidently she was the kind of a girl who would be firm about those. Then, for a time—for two long weeks—E. G.'s hose were black; somber, mournful, unrelieved black. They had quarreled. After that they brightened. They became numerous, and varied. There was about them something triumphant, ecstatic. They rose to a paean.
"They're engaged," Martha told herself. "I hope she's the right kind of a girl for Eddie."
Then, as they sobered down and even began to require some of Martha's expert workmanship she knew that it was all right. "She's making him save up."
Six months later the Elite Laundry knew E. G. no more.
Myrt, strolling into Martha's room one evening, as was her wont, found that severe-faced lady suspiciously red-eyed. Even Myrt, the unimaginative, sensed that some unhappiness had Martha in its grip.
"What's the matter?"
"Oh, I don't know. Kinda lonesome, I guess. What's the news down at your place?"
"News! Nothing ever happens in our office. Honestly, some days I think I'll just drop dead, it's so slow. I took three hours dictation from Hubbell this morning. He's writing the 'Dangers of Dora' series, and I almost go to sleep over it. He's got her now where she's chained in the cave with the tide coming up, on a deserted coast, and nobody for miles around. I was tickled to death when old Slezak called me away to fill out the contract blanks for him and Willie Kaplan. Kaplan's signed up with the Slezak's for three years at a million and a half a year. He stood over me while I was filling it out—him and his brother Gus—as if I was going to put something over on 'em when they weren't looking."