Page:Our Girls.pdf/84

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OUR GIRLS

laughing and wriggling, and then fuming and flaming and weeping over her troubles as if the world were coming to an end. The lady-superintendent at one of the factories has contracted a habit of giving pocket-handkerchiefs to the girls who come to her with tears dripping down their noses. She has given away so many that her empty handkerchief-case is a source of amusement to her friends. It is also a cause of hilarity to the female workers. As often as a girl, who has gone off in a fury to "tell her strite," comes back to the canteen with a composed countenance, she is greeted with "Got a wipe?" And then there are screams of laughter.

Tommy's sister usually brings a small leather bag into the factory, and if she allowed you to look into it you would probably find a penny novelette, or perhaps a lurid sevenpenny novel, a prodigious quantity of sweets, a tiny hand-mirror and a powder-puff. The Cockney girl has often very beautiful hair, generally