on its rest with reckless determination. "Workin' girls' life
ain't what it's cracked up. Me to quit--that's what I'm comin'
to."

"Mary!" Saxon uttered the other's name with a reproach so
profound that she was compelled to rest her own iron for emphasis
and so lose a dozen movements.

Mary flashed a half-frightened look across.

"I didn't mean it, Saxon," she whimpered. "Honest, I didn't. I
wouldn't never go that way. But I leave it to you, if a day like
this don't get on anybody's nerves. Listen to that!"

The stricken woman, on her back, drumming her heels on the floor,
was shrieking persistently and monotonously, like a mechanical
siren. Two women, clutching her under the arms, were dragging her
down the aisle. She drummed and shrieked the length of it. The
door opened, and a vast, muffled roar of machinery burst in; and
in the roar of it the drumming and the shrieking were drowned ere
the door swung shut. Remained of the episode only the scorch of
cloth drifting ominously through the air.

"It's sickenin'," said Mary.

And thereafter, for a long time, the many irons rose and fell,
the pace of the room in no wise diminished; while the forewoman
strode the aisles with a threatening eye for incipient breakdown
and hysteria. Occasionally an ironer lost the stride for an
instant, gasped or sighed, then caught it up again with weary