“There isn’t any excuse for a man’s eating his dinner with hands like that,” said Abby.  “It’s worse to poison yourself with your own dirt than with other folks’.  It hurts your own self more.”

“He ain’t worth minding,” said the girl.

“Do you suppose I do mind him?” returned Abby.  Maria looked at her meaningly.  The young man, whose name was Edison Bartlett, had once tried to court Abby, but neither she nor Maria had ever told of it.

“His clothes were a pearl gray,” said the girl at the stitching-machine, reverting to the original subject.

“Good gracious, who cares what color they were?” cried Abby, impatiently.

“He looked awful handsome in ’em,” said the girl.  “He’s awful handsome.”

“You’d better look at handsome fellows in your own set, Sadie Peel,” said Abby, roughly.

The girl, who was extremely pretty, carried herself well, and dressed with cheap fastidiousness, colored.

“I don’t see what we have to think about sets for,” said she.  “I guess way back the Peels were as good as the Lloyds.  We’re in a free country, where one is as good as another, ain’t we?”

“No one is as good as another, except in the sight of the Lord, in any country on the face of this earth,” said Abby.

“If you are as good in your own sight, I don’t see that it makes much difference about the sight of other human beings,” said Ellen.  “I guess that’s what makes a republic, anyway.”

Sadie Peel gave a long, bewildered look at her, then she turned to Abby.

“Do you know where I can get somebody to do accordion-plaiting for me?” she asked.

“No,” said Abby.  “I never expect to get to the height of accordion-plaiting.”

“I know where you can,” said another girl, coming up.  She had light hair, falling in a harsh, uncurled bristle over her forehead; her black gown was smeared with paste, and even her face and hands were sticky with it.

“There’s a great splash of paste on your nose, Hattie Wright,” said Abby.

The girl took out a crumpled handkerchief and began rubbing her nose absently while she went on talking about the accordion-plaiting.

“There’s a woman on Joy Street does it,” said she.  “She lives just opposite the school-house, and she does it awful cheap, only three cents a yard.”  She thrust the handkerchief into her pocket.

“You haven’t got it half off,” said Abby.

“Let it stay there, then,” said the girl, indifferently.  “If you work pasting linings in a shoe-shop you’ve got to get pasted yourself.”

Ellen looked at the girl with a curious reflection that she spoke the truth, that she really was pasted herself, that the soil and the grind of her labor were wearing on her soul.  She had seen this girl out of the shop—­in fact, only the day before—­and no one would have known her for the same person.  When her light hair was curled, and she was prettily dressed, she was quite a beauty.  In the shop she was a slattern, and seemed to go down under the wheels of her toil.