Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/37

Rh that so far she has had to buy no clothes, for she came here with a good stock, and that the firm at Christmas-time gave the girls their choice of a cashmere dress or money, and that she took the cashmere dress, hoping in time to save enough money to get it made. Why does she not do it herself? Do you suppose that after standing all day, working with hands, eyes, feet, and brain, she is in a condition to sew at night? Do you not know that her feet are tired, that her back aches, and that when she returns from work she is unable to do anything but rest?

You know she never calls it home; she always speaks of it as "the house where I board." And you do not wonder at this after you have seen it. She and the girl with whom she chums have a hall room on the top floor, three flights up. It is furnished with a high chest of drawers, topped by a small looking-glass; there are three chairs in various stages of decay, a medium-sized wash-stand and, abomination of abominations, a folding-bed. Just why there should be a folding-bed is not explained, for visitors are seldom in this room, and no man visitor, not even one's own father, would be permitted up there. The room is heated, so it is claimed, from a dark register,