"There goes your whistle!" she said, getting up suddenly. "Say, Nance,
can't you scare up an excuse to hook off this afternoon? I'll take you to
a show if you will!"
Nance's pulses leapt at the thought, but she shook her head and went
reluctantly back to her bench. For the next ten minutes her fingers
lagged at their task, and she grew more and more discontented. All the
youth in her clamored suddenly for freedom. She was tired of being the
slave of a whistle, a cog in a machine. With a sudden rash impulse she
threw down her tools and, slipping her hat from its peg, went in swift
pursuit of Birdie.
At the foot of the narrow stairs she came to a sudden halt. Outside the
door, in the niche made by the gas-pipe and the adjoining wall, stood Mac
Clarke and Birdie. He had his arms about her, and there was a look in his
face that Nance had never seen in a man's face before. Of course it was
meant for the insolent eyes under the picture hat, but instead it fell on
Nance standing in the doorway. For a full minute his ardent gaze held her
captive; then he dropped his arms in sudden embarrassment, and she melted
out of the doorway and fled noiselessly up the stairway.
On the upper landing she suffered a head-on collision with the foreman,
who demanded in no gentle tones what in the devil she was doing out there
with her hat on at that hour.
"None of your business," said Nance, recklessly.
Bean looked at her flashing eyes and flushed face, and laughed.
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