Birdie's advice had been to quit the factory, and Nance
had taken the plunge without any idea of what she was going to put in
its place.
For some reason best known to herself, she never mentioned that episode
in the factory yard to either Birdie or Dan Lewis. There were many things
about Birdie that she did not like, and she knew only too well what Miss
Stanley would have said. But then Miss Stanley wouldn't have approved of
Mr. Demry and his dope, or Mrs. Snawdor and her beer, or Mag Gist, with
her loud voice and coarse jokes. When one lives in Calvary Alley, one has
to compromise; it is seldom the best or the next best one can afford,
even in friends.
When Mrs. Snawdor heard that Nance had quit work, she was furious. Who
was Nance Molloy, she wanted to know, to go and stick up her nose at a
glass factory? There wasn't a bloomin' thing the matter with Clarke's.
_She'd_ begun in a factory an' look at her! What was Nance a-goin' to do?
Run the streets with Birdie Smelts? It was bad enough, God knew, to have
Snawdor settin' around like a tombstone, an' Fidy a-havin' a fit if you
so much as looked at her, without havin' Nance eatin' 'em out of house
an' home an' not bringin' in a copper cent. If she stayed at home, she'd
have to do the work; that was all there was to it!
"Anybody'd think jobs happened around as regerlar as the rent man," she
ended bitterly. "You'll see the day when you're glad enough to go back to
the factory."
Before the month was over, Nance began to wonder if Mrs.
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