Fact'ry 'Ands by Edward Dyson

THE day was hot. The industrious little tin thermometer over packer's bench registered 103°, not out, and the atmosphere of the long flat was as oppressive as a burden, and heavy with motes. The factory was low-roofed and ill-ventilated. Through the row of dingy western windows the afternoon sun shot broad beams that shimmered in the dull interior like strips of white-hot steel. To many of the sallow girls at the pasting boards it seemed that they were supporting the ceiling with their stiff and aching heads. The factory sulked; all brows were lowering, and lips drooped with a sickly petulance. Several of the piece-workers, confirmed grafters, toiled with swift fingers, hanging desperately to the task, but the majority of the Beauties leaned upon their boards indolently, moving their limbs with slow effort. The flat was gusty with sighs. It was impossible to hold the paid hands to their tables; the forewomen kept up a continual whining, and Ellis fluttered about uneasily, tremulous with apprehension, the paper-dust and the sweat coagulating into mud in his scattered tufts of whiskers.

"Now, now, girls!" the foreman's timorous expostulation was almost as insistent as the ticking of the big cloak. "Now, now, girls--now, now!" The Beauties treated him with full disdain; they had no heart even for insolence.