"My land! How exciting! It must be wonderful working in a place like that."
Myrt yawned, and stretched her round young arms high above her head.
"I don't see anything exciting about it. Of course it isn't as bad as your job, sitting there all day, sewing and mending. It isn't even as if you were sewing on new stuff, like a dressmaker, and really making something out of it. I should think you'd go crazy, it's so uninteresting."
Martha turned to the window, so that her face was hidden from Myrt. "Oh, I don't know. Darning socks isn't so bad. Depends on what you see in 'em."
"See in 'em!" echoed Miss Myrtle Halperin. "See! Well for the love of heaven what can you see in mending socks, besides holes!"
Martha didn't answer. Myrt, finding things dull, took herself off, languidly. At the door she turned and looked back on the stiff little figure seated in the window with its face to the gray twilight.
"What's become of your friend What's-his-name that you used to darn socks for at home? Grant, wasn't it? Eddie Grant?"
"That was it," answered Martha. "He's married. He and his wife, they've got to visit Eddie's folks back home, on their wedding trip. I miss him something terrible. He was just like a son to me."
[signed] Edna Ferber
Those Who Went First