"I don't know him by name," I said. "Point him out to me."
Fred said ominously:
"That's him; but he's not looking quite his usual handsome self."
I saw a man several departments off who even from that distance looked as if his face and nose were swollen and cut.
"Then you never went out with him?" demanded Fred.
"Why, of course not," I declared. "I've never been out with any yards men except you and Hermann. You know that."
"I thought so. Now look a-here," and he showed me his fists. The skin was off the knuckles, and they had an otherwise battered look.
"That son of a blank," said Fred, "boasted that you had been out with him. I knew that he lied, for no decent girl would be seen with the likes of him; so I soaked him such a swig in the nose that he'll not blow it again for a month."
I tell this incident because it seems to be a characteristic example of what certain contemptible men say about girls whom they do not even know. I have heard of men who deliberately boasted of favors from girls who despised them and who assailed the character of girls who had snubbed them. This was my first experience, and my only one of this kind. That a man I had not known existed would talk lightly about me in a bar-room full of men seemed to me a shameful and cruel thing. That a man who did know me had defended me with his fists thrilled and moved me. At that moment I almost loved Fred.
This incident, however, thoroughly disgusted me with everything connected with the yards. I made up my mind that I would go with Fred to New York. We talked it over, and he said that even if the firm would not send me, he himself would engage me after he was settled there. So I began to plan to leave Chicago, though when I paused to think of Mr. Hamilton I grew miserable. Still, the thought of the change excited me. Lolly said I'd soon forget him—I knew I wouldn't—and that there was nothing like a change of scene to cure one of an infatuation of that kind. She always called my love for Hamilton "infatuation," and pretended never to regard it as anything serious. She said I was a hero-worshipper, and made idols of unworthy clay and endowed them with impossible attributes and virtues. She said girls like me never really loved a man at all. We loved an image that we ourselves created.