"There ain't many girls with your looks, Miss Flanagan, as'd be out of a job as long as you've been."
Katie shrugged her shoulders: she was beyond resentment.
"The more pity to 'em," she said.
"Not many," repeated Mr. Woods.
There was an awkward silence. The collector paused because he wanted her fully to weigh an implication that he honestly considered to contain sound advice, and Katie refrained from further comment for the excellent reason that she had nothing to say. It was Woods that at last took up the broken thread.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Miss Flanagan," he not unkindly concluded; "I'll hold 'em off till to-morrow evenin', an' if by then you can pay me a chunk on account, it'll be all right; if you can't——"
He stood aside, and Katie clapped him warmly on the shoulder.
"You're doin' your best, Woods," she said, "an' I thank you for it. I'll get the job someways, but not the way you think, an'—an' I thank you."
Only half-way to the corner she met the girl that lived across the hall from her, Carrie Berkowicz, a homely, round-cheeked, brown-haired Lithuanian Jewess, who worked in a shirtwaist factory on Tenth Street.
"Say, Katie"—Carrie prided herself on her colloquial English, as she learned it in the night-classes in the Rand School—"were you still looking for a job?"