"Well, it was a pretty young one," said the first girl.

"Looks to me as if Eva Loud's skirt was comin' off," said the pretty
girl. She pressed close to Jim Tenny with a familiar air of
proprietorship as she spoke, but the young man did not seem to heed
her. He was looking over his bench at the figure on the street
below, and his heavy black eyebrows were scowling, and his mouth
set.

Jim Tenny was handsome after a swarthy and grimy fashion, for the
tint of the leather seemed to have become absorbed into his skin.
His black mustache bristled roughly, but his face was freer than
usual from his black beard-stubble, because the day before had been
Sunday and he had shaved. His black right hand with its squat
discolored nails grasped his cutting-knife with a hard clutch, his
left held the piece of leather firmly in place, while he stared out
with that angry and anxious scowl at Eva, who had paused on the
street below, and was staring up at the windows, as if she meditated
a wild search in the factory for the lost child. There was a curious
likeness between the two faces; people had been accustomed to say
that Eva Loud and her gentleman looked more like brother and sister
than a courting couple, and there was, moreover, a curious spirit of
comradeship between the two. It asserted itself now with the young
man, in opposition to the more purely sexual attraction of the
pretty girl who was leaning against him, and for whom he had
deserted Eva.

After all, friendship and good comradeship are a steadier force than
love, if not as overwhelming, and it may be that tortoise of the