On a gilt chain about her neck
hung a locket in the form of a heart half as large as the one that beat
uneasily within her. Mamie came forward reluctantly and saluted. Then
she began to squirm from side to side and to shift from foot to foot,
giggling in unfathomable embarrassment.
"Well," said Helen, in a voice that was not at all unkind.
Mamie's giggle grew worse. She seemed bent on snapping the massive gilt
chain with twisting it back and forth, and finally gave up the whole
case. "You tell it, Helen," she begged. "I forgot wot I was goin' t'
say. I'm scared poifectly stiff."
Helen complied. "May it please your Honour, Mamie O'Farrell wants me to
say that she represents the Amalgamated Union of Cash Girls and Juvenile
Cotton Mill and Glass Factory Operatives. Mamie is fifteen. She works
eleven hours a day and receives three and a half dollars a week. She
passes two hours every day clinging to a strap in a crowded surface car.
She carries her lunch in a paper bundle together with a copy of Laura M.
Clay's novel entitled 'Irma's Ducal Lover.' Saturday nights, if her
father has been strong enough to pass Murphy's saloon without opening
his pay envelope, she goes to the theatre where the play is 'The Queen
of the Opium Fiends.
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