There had been a time when Tessie, if she thought of these women at all, felt sorry for them; worn, drab, lacking in style and figure.  Now she envied them.  For the maternal may be strong at twenty.

* * * * *

There were weeks upon weeks when no letter came from Chuck.  In his last letter there had been some talk of his being sent to Russia.  Tessie’s eyes, large enough now in her thin face, distended with a great fear.  Russia!  His letter spoke, too, of French villages and chateaux.  He and a bunch of fellows had been introduced to a princess or a countess or something—­it was all one to Tessie—­and what do you think?  She had kissed them all on both cheeks!  Seems that’s the way they did in France.

The morning after the receipt of this letter the girls at the watch factory might have remarked her pallor had they not been so occupied with a new and more absorbing topic.

“Tess, did you hear about Angie Hatton?”

“What about her?”

“She’s going to France.  It’s in the Milwaukee paper, all about her being Chippewa’s fairest daughter, and a picture of the house, and her being the belle of the Fox River Valley, and she’s giving up her palatial home and all to go to work in a Y.M.C.A. canteen for her country and bleeding France.”

“Ya-as she is!” sneered Tessie, and a dull red flush, so deep as to be painful, swept over her face from throat to brow.  “Ya-as she is, the doll-faced simp!  Why, say, she never wiped up a floor in her life, or baked a cake, or stood on them feet of hers.  She couldn’t cut up a loaf of bread decent.  Bleedin’ France!  Ha!  That’s rich, that is.”  She thrust her chin out brutally, and her eyes narrowed to slits.  “She’s goin’ over there after that fella of hers.  She’s chasin’ him.  It’s now or never, and she knows it and she’s scared, same’s the rest of us.  On’y we got to set home and make the best of it.  Or take what’s left.”  She turned her head slowly to where Nap Ballou stood over a table at the far end of the room.  She laughed a grim, unlovely little laugh.  “I guess when you can’t go after what you want, like Angie, why, you gotta take second choice.”

All that day, at the bench, she was the reckless, insolent, audacious Tessie of six months ago.  Nap Ballou was always standing over her, pretending to inspect some bit of work or other, his shoulder brushing hers.  She laughed up at him so that her face was not more than two inches from his.  He flushed, but she did not.  She laughed a reckless little laugh.

“Thanks for helpin’ teach me my trade, Mr. Ballou.  ’Course I only been at it over three years now, so I ain’t got the hang of it yet.”

He straightened up slowly, and as he did so he rested a hand on her shoulder for a brief moment.  She did not shrug it off.

* * * * *