milk. While I am cutting bread for the two hundred I hear her say to the
cook in a gossipy tone:

"How do you like the new girl? She's here all alone."

I am called away and do not hear the rest of the conversation. When I
return the cook lectures me in this way:

"Here alone, are you?"

"Yes."

"Well, I see no reason why you shouldn't get along nicely and not kill
yourself with work either. Just stick at it and they'll do right by you.
Lots o' girls who's here alone gets to fooling around. Now I like
everybody to have a good time, and I hope you'll have a good time, too,
but you mustn't carry it too far."

My mind went back as he said this to a conversation I had had the night
before with a working-girl at my boarding-house.

"Where is your home?" I asked.

She had been doing general housework, but ill-health had obliged her to
take a rest.

She looked at me skeptically.

"We don't have no homes," was her answer. "We just get up and get
whenever they send us along."