Lavinski did not encourage conversation,--it distracted the
workers,--and Nance's exuberance, which at first found vent in all sorts
of jokes and capers, soon died for lack of encouragement. She learned,
instead, to use all her energy on buttons and, being denied verbal
expression, she revolved many things in her small mind. The result of her
thinking was summed up in her speech to her stepmother at the end of the
first week.
"Gee! I'm sick of doin' the same thing! I ain't learnin' nothin'. If
anybody was smart, they could make a machine to put on two times as many
buttons as me in half the time. I want to begin something at the
beginning and make it clean through. I'm sick an' tired of buttons. I'm
goin' to quit!"
But Mrs. Snawdor had come to a belated realization of the depleted state
of the family treasury and she urged Nance to keep on for the present.
"We better cut all the corners we kin," she said, "till Snawdor gits over
this fit of the dumps. Ain't a reason in the world he don't go into the
junk business. I ain't astin' him to drive aroun' an' yell 'Old iron!' I
know that's tryin' on a bashful man. All I ast him is to set still an'
let it come to him. Thank the Lord, I _have_ known husbands that wasn't
chicken-hearted!"
So Nance kept on reluctantly, even after Mr. Snawdor got a small job
collecting. Sometimes she went to sleep over her task and had to be
shaken awake, but that was before she began to drink black coffee with
the other workers at nine o'clock.
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