“My, ain’t you awful smart,” said the other girl, sneeringly, but she went on with her work without another word.  Presently she said to Ellen, kindly enough:  “If you lay the shoes the way I do, so, you can get them faster.  You’ll find it pays.  Every little saving of time counts when you are workin’ by the piece.”

“Thank you,” said Ellen, and did as she was instructed.  She began to work with exceeding swiftness for a beginner.  Her fingers were supple, her nervous energy great.  Flynn came and stood beside her, watching her.

“If you work at that rate, you’ll make it pretty profitable,” he said.

“Thank you,” said Ellen.

“And a square knot every time,” he added, with almost a caressing inflection.  Mamie Brady tied in the twine with compressed lips.  Granville Joy passed them, pushing a rack full of shoes to another department, and he glanced at them jealously.  Still he was not seriously alarmed as to Flynn, who, although he was good-looking, was a Catholic.  Mrs. Zelotes seemed an effectual barrier to that.

“Ed Flynn talks that way to everybody,” Mamie Brady said to Ellen, after the foreman had passed on.  She said it this time quite inoffensively.  Ellen laughed.

“If I do tie the knots square, that is the main thing,” she said.

“Then you don’t like him?”

“I never spoke two words to him before the day I applied for work,” Ellen replied, haughtily.  She was beginning to feel that perhaps the worst feature of her going to work in a factory would be this girl.

“I’ve known girls who would be willing to go down on their knees and tie his shoes when they hadn’t seen more of him than that,” said the girl.  “Ed Flynn is an awful masher.”

Ellen went on with her work.  The girl, after a side glance at her, went on with hers.

Gradually Ellen’s work began to seem mechanical.  At first she had felt as if she were tying all her problems of life in square knots.  She had to use all her brain upon it; after a while her brain had so informed her fingers that they had learned their lesson well enough to leave her free to think, if only the girl at her side would let her alone.  The girl had a certain harsh beauty, coarsely curling red hair, a great mass of it, gathered in an untidy knot, and a brilliant complexion.  Her hands were large and red.  Ellen’s contrasted with them looked like a baby’s.

“You ‘ain’t got hands for workin’ in a shoe-shop,” said Mamie Brady, presently, and it was impossible to tell from her tone whether she envied or admired Ellen’s hands, or was proud of the superior strength of her own.

“Well, they’ve got to work in a shoe-shop,” said Ellen, with a short laugh.

“You won’t find it so easy to work with such little mites of hands when it comes to some things,” said the girl.

It began to be clear that she exulted in her large, coarse hands as being fitted for her work.