Once the door with the faded gilt letters had closed, with him inside, the legless man, who was none other than Blizzard, the manufacturer of hats, put off those airs of helplessness and humility by which so many coins were attracted into the little tin cup upon the top of his hand-organ, and assumed the attitude of one accustomed to command and to be served, to reward and to punish.  He was no longer a beggar, but a magnate.  He swelled with power, and twenty girls of almost as many nationalities, plaiting straw hats by the gas-light, cringed in their hearts, and redoubled the speed of their hands.  About the twenty girls who slaved for Blizzard there were two peculiarities which at once distinguished them from any other collection of female factory-hands on the East Side.  They were all strong and healthy looking, and they were all pretty.  He had collected them much as rich men in a higher station of life collect paintings or pearls.  If some of them bore the marks of blows and pinchings, it was not upon any part of them which showed.  If some of them suffered from the fear of torture or even sudden death, it did not prevent them from showing the master rows of even white teeth between ingratiatingly parted lips whenever he deigned to speak to them.  If any girl among them thought to escape him, to find work elsewhere, to betray what she knew of him, even, and vanish into the slums of some far city, she was deterred by the memory of certain anecdotes constantly related by her companions.  The most terrible of these anecdotes was that related of a certain Florence Magrue.  She had fled with her story to the nearest policeman, who had quietly returned her to the shop, reluctantly, it was admitted, but with the determination of a man whose very existence depends upon the favor of another.  The master had welcomed her and smiled upon her as upon an erring child.  He had sent her upon an errand into the cellar under the shop, himself unlocking the door.  And that was the last that any one had ever seen of Florence Magrue.

In addition to fear, the master supplied certain creature comforts, not lightly to be thrown away.  If a girl could make up her mind to accept shame, bodily injury if she displeased, and a life of toil, she fared better under Blizzard’s direction than her sister who worked for Ecbaum, let us say, the lacemaker, or Laskar, or any of a thousand East Side employers of labor.  The man could be kind upon impulse, and generous.  He paid the highest wages.  He supplied nourishing food at noon, and a complete hour in which to discuss it.  Furthermore, if a girl pleased him, the work of her hands was subjected to less critical inspection, and if she had any music in her, he invited her upstairs sometimes to work the pedals of his grand piano, while his own powerful, hairy hands rippled and thundered upon the keys.  He was of a Godlike kindness when his mind inclined to music, and the pedalling was skilful and sure.  But let the unfortunate crouched under the key-board, her trembling hands taking the place of those feet which the master had lost, respond stupidly to the signals conveyed to her shoulder by graduated pressures from the stump of his right leg, and punishment of blows, pinchings, and sarcasms was swift and sure.