On her third round she faced me with the same question: 

“Why don’t you finish them pants?”

“Because,” I answered this time, “there’s bedbugs in ’em and I ain’t goin’ to touch ’em!”

“Oh! my!” she taunted me, in a sneering voice, “that’s dreadful, ain’t it?  Bedbugs!  Why, you need only just look on the floor to see ’em running around anywhere!”

I said nothing more, and this remark was the last Frances ever addressed to me.

“Mike!” she called to the presser in the corner, “will you have this young lady’s card made out.”

She gave me no further work to do, but, too humiliated to sit idle, I joined a group of girls who were sewing badges.

We had made up all description of political badges—­badges for the court, for processions, school badges, military badges, flimsy bits of coloured ribbon and gold fringe which go the tour of the world, rallying men to glory.  In the dismal twilight our fingers were now busied with black-and-silver “in memoriam” badges, to be worn as a last tribute to some dead member of a coterie who would follow him to the grave under the emblem that had united them.

We were behindhand for the dead as well as for the living.  At six the power was turned off, the machine hands went home, there was still an unfinished heap of black badges.

I got up and put on my things in the dark closet that served for dressing-room.  Frances called to the hand sewers in her rasping voice: 

“You darsn’t leave till you’ve finished them badges.”

How could I feel the slavery they felt?  My nerves were sensitive; I was unaccustomed to their familiar hardships.  But on the other hand, my prison had an escape; they were bound within four walls; I dared to rebel knowing the resources of the black silk emergency bag, money lined.  They for their living must pay with moral submission as well as physical fatigue.  There was nothing between them and starvation except the success of their daily effort.  What opposition could the German woman place, what could she risk, knowing that two hungry mouths waited to be fed beside her own?

With a farewell glance at the rubbish-strewn room, the high, grimy windows, the group of hand sewers bent over their work in the increasing darkness, I started down the stairs.  A hand was laid on my arm, and I looked up and saw Mike’s broad Irish face and sandy head bending toward me.

“I suppose you understand,” he said, “that there’ll be no more work for you.”

“Yes,” I answered, “I understand,” and we exchanged a glance that meant we both agreed it was Frances’ fault.

In the shop below I found Mr. F. and returned the fifty cents he had advanced me.  He seemed surprised at this.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in his gentle voice, “that we couldn’t arrange things.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I said.  But I dared not add a word against Frances.  She had terrorized me like the rest, and though I knew I never would see her again, her pale, lifeless mask haunted me.  I remembered a remark the German woman had made when Frances dismissed the Polish girl:  “People ought to make it easy, and not hard, for others to earn a living.”