Added to the stale, heavy atmosphere there is now a smell of coffee and tobacco smoke.  The old hands have boiled a noon beverage on the gas; the tailors smoke an after-dinner pipe.  Put up in newspaper by Mrs. Wood, at my matinal departure, my lunches, after a journey across the city, held tightly under my arm, become, before eating, a block of food, a composite meal in which I can distinguish original bits of ham sandwich and apple pie.  The work, however, does not seem hard to me.  I sew on buttons, rip trousers, baste coat sleeves—­I do all sorts of odd jobs from eight until six, without feeling, in spite of the bad air, any great physical fatigue which ten minutes’ brisk walk does not shake off.  But never have the hours dragged so; the moral weariness in the midst of continual scolding and abuse are unbearable.  Each night I come to a firm decision to leave the following day, but weakly I return, sure of my dollar and dreading to face again the giant city in search of work.  About four one afternoon, well on in the week, Frances brings me a pair of military trousers; the stripes of cloth at the side seam are to be ripped off.  I go to work cheerfully cutting the threads and slipping one piece of cloth from the other.

Apparently Frances is exasperated that I should do the job in an easy way.  It is the only way I know to rip, but Frances knows another way that breaks your back and almost puts your eyes out, that makes you tired and behindhand and sure of a scolding.  She shows me how to rip her way.  The two threads of the machine, one from above and one from below, which make the stitch, must be separated.  The work must be turned first on the wrong, then on the right side, the scissors must lift first the upper, then the under thread.  I begin by cutting a long hole in the trousers, which I hide so Frances will not see it.  She has frightened me into dishonesty.  Arrived at the middle of the stripe I am obliged to turn the trousers wrong side out and right side out again every other stitch.  While I was working in this way, getting more enraged every moment, a bedbug ran out of the seam between my fingers.  I killed it.  It was full of blood and made a wet red spot on the table.  Then I put down the trousers and drew away my chair.  It was useless saying anything to the girl next me.  She was a Pole, dull, sullen, without a friendly word; but the two women beyond had told me once that they pitied Frances’ husband, so I looked to them for support in what I was about to do.

“There’s bedbugs in them clothes,” I said.  “I won’t work on ’em.  No, sir, not if she sends me away this very minute.”

In a great hurry Frances passed me twice.  She called out angrily both times without waiting for an answer: 

“Why don’t you finish them pants?”

Frances was a German.  She wore two rhinestone combs in her frizzes, which held also dust and burnt odds and ends of hair.  She had no lips whatever.  Her mouth shut completely over them after each tirade.  Her eyes were separated by two deep scowls and her voice was shrill and nasal.