Page:Stella Dallas, a novel (IA stelladallasnove00prou).pdf/308

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rained on the morning of Laurel's tea. It rained in torrents.

"Gracious, don't it pour!" exclaimed Stella for the dozenth time to the woman next to her, and for the dozenth time to herself, Twon't make any difference, though. They've all got limousines." Then out loud again, "Gracious, don't it pour!"

Every few minutes she looked up from the machine which she had been feeding with coarse white cambric all the morning, and gazed anxiously out of the streaked window beside her toward the building opposite, against the dark background of which she could see the rain sweeping.

About noon she exclaimed, "Say, it looks lighter! Say, don't it look lighter to you?" Then, "It is letting up. It looks to me as though it was letting up a little." And finally, "Gosh, it's going to clear off!" And it did!

At five o'clock that afternoon, when Stella, with a hundred or so other women, emerged from the big black building through the little opening at the bottom (like the opening cut at the bottom of a big black hogshead; every little while a thin dark stream of humanity would pour out of the building; it housed over a hundred small factories), the air was clear and crisp and cold. Stella stepped out of the little stream, once on the sidewalk, stood still, and gazed straight up. Yes! It was all right! The stars were shining like mad, up there, at the top of the canyon, beyond the dizzy precipices.