Carrie at last could scarcely sit still. Her legs began to tire
and she wanted to get up and stretch. Would noon never come? It
seemed as if she had worked an entire day. She was not hungry at
all, but weak, and her eyes were tired, straining at the one
point where the eye-punch came down. The girl at the right
noticed her squirmings and felt sorry for her. She was
concentrating herself too thoroughly--what she did really
required less mental and physical strain. There was nothing to
be done, however. The halves of the uppers came piling steadily
down. Her hands began to ache at the wrists and then in the
fingers, and towards the last she seemed one mass of dull,
complaining muscles, fixed in an eternal position and performing
a single mechanical movement which became more and more
distasteful, until as last it was absolutely nauseating. When
she was wondering whether the strain would ever cease, a dull-
sounding bell clanged somewhere down an elevator shaft, and the
end came. In an instant there was a buzz of action and
conversation. All the girls instantly left their stools and
hurried away in an adjoining room, men passed through, coming
from some department which opened on the right. The whirling
wheels began to sing in a steadily modifying key, until at last
they died away in a low buzz. There was an audible stillness, in
which the common voice sounded strange.

Carrie got up and sought her lunch box. She was stiff, a little
dizzy, and very thirsty. On the way to the small space portioned
off by wood, where all the wraps and lunches were kept, she
encountered the foreman, who stared at her hard.

"Well," he said, "did you get along all right?"