"Didn't I tell you so!" exclaimed my friend, amid the excited comments and questions of the others at the table. "That's some of the foreman's doing, and I'm real glad for you--it's nothing more than what I've been expectin', though."
This opinion was not shared, however, by the rest of my companions, who repeated divers terrible tales of moral ruin and betrayal, more or less apocryphal, wherein the boss was inevitably the villain. I now found myself suddenly the cynosure of all eyes, the target of a thousand whispered comments, as I moved about the workroom. The physical agony of aching back and blistered feet was too great, though, for me to feel any mental distress over the fact--for the moment at least. In the awful frenzy of the Saturday-afternoon rush, greater than that of any other day of the week, I did not care much what they thought or said about the boss and me.
I was shaking my towels and napkins, and trying to look as indifferent as I believed I felt, when the foreman beckoned me again, and stepping aside, thrust a piece of yellow wrapping-paper into my hand.
"Read it when nobody's looking," he said in a low voice; "and don't think wrong of me for meddling in what's not my business"; and he was off again.
"You'd better give up this job. It's no place for a girl that wants to do right. Come back Monday and get your money; and I wouldn't stay to-night after six o'clock, if I was you, but go home and rest. If you can't get a job as good as this inside of a day or two, I think my sister can get one for you in her place; but you won't stay here if you take my advice.
"P.S. Please don't show this, or I'd lose my job; and be sure to come Monday evening for your money."
I made at once for the cloak-room. When I emerged, a moment later, it was to find the narrow passage obstructed by one of the big soiled-linen trucks, over which "J. P." bent industriously, as if he hadn't another thought in the world beyond the sorting of table-cloths and napkins. Suddenly he lifted up his lank frame, and seeing one of his workpeople making her escape, he called out:
"I don't care if it isn't; I am going home," I replied promptly.
"What's the matter?" he asked in a loud voice, and then, as he drew near, added in an undertone: