“Perhaps if I show you how to hold the hat, and just how to set the needle, you would get on faster,” said the strange girl, laying down her work, and holding out her hand for Brownie’s.
It was even so. She was very quick in her motions, and apt to learn, and after a while she found she could wire a hat in ten minutes, when at first it had taken her more than double that time.
But the confinement—the close, hot room, the noise of distant machinery, and incessant chatter of the girls around her, began to wear upon her.
Her head throbbed and ached, as did also her arms and back, from their accustomed work, and she grew so tired and nervous that it seemed to her when night came as if her brain were turned.
Wearily and sorrowfully she wended her way back to the hotel where she had stopped the night before, and threw herself upon her bed, too thoroughly worn out to even heed the demands of hunger.
But her strong spirit conquered at last, and, rising, she bathed her face and head, rearranged her toilet, put on her hat again, and went down to the office to settle her bill at the hotel.
Notwithstanding her loneliness on the night of her arrival, after the noise and din of the day, she would gladly have remained in that quiet room, but she knew her purse would not permit of it; so, after paying the clerk, she ordered a carriage and proceeded to the factory boarding-house, which was to be her home for the present.
CHAPTER VIII
AN ADVENTURE
The days passed slowly by, and Brownie became more and more accustomed to her work.
Before the week was out, she found, by diligent application, that she could earn seventy-five cents a day, and during the next week her earnings gradually crept up to a dollar a day.