"Not always. Sometimes I cry all to myself.
"See the sun?" she exclaimed, lifting her head. (It shone golden through the window's dirty, cloudy pane.) "He's peekin' at me! He'll find you soon. Looks like he was glad to see us sitting here!"
Sun, friend, light, air, seek them—seek them! Pour what tide of pure gold you may in through the sullied pane; touch, caress the bowed heads at the clicking machines! Shine on the dusty, untidy hair! on the bowed shoulders! on the flying hands!
At noon I made a reluctant concession to wisdom
and habit. Unwilling to thwart my purposes and collapse from sheer fatigue, at the dinner hour I went to a restaurant and ordered a meal in keeping with my appetite. I had never been so hungry. I almost wept with joy when the chicken and cranberry and potato appeared. Never was sauce more poignant than that which seasoned the only real repast I had in Lynn.
The hours, from one to three went fairly well, but by 3:30 I was tired out, my fingers had grown wooden with fatigue, glue-pot and folding-line, board, hammer and awl had grown indistinct. It was hard-to continue. The air stifled. Odours conspired together. Oil, leather, glue (oh, that to-heaven-smelling glue!), tobacco smoke, humanity.
Maggie asked me, "How old do I look?" I gave her thirty. Twenty-five it seemed she was. In guessing the next girl's age no better luck. "It's this," Maggie nodded to the workroom; "it takes it out of you! Just you wait till you've worked ten years in Lynn."
Ten years! Heaven forbid! Already I could have rushed from the factory, shaken its dust from my feet, and with hands over ears shut out the horrid din that inexorably cried louder than human speech.
Everything we said was shrieked in the friendly ear bent close.