“Not on yer life, I don’t!” said Katie, with an ugly frown.  “I hate the old dump!  I hate every stone in the whole pile!  I could tear that nasty green vine down an’ stamp on it.  I’d like to strip its leaves off an’ leave it bare.  I’d like to turn the hose off and see it dry up an’ be all brown, an’ ugly, an’ dead.  It’s stealin’ the water they oughtta have over there in the fountain.  It’s stealin’ the money they oughtta pay us fer our work!  It’s creepin’ round the winders an’ eatin’ up the air.  Didn’t you never take notice to how they let it grow acrost the winders to hide folks from lookin’ in from the visitor’s winders there on the east side?  They don’t care how it shuts away the draught and makes it hotter ’n a furnace where we work!  No, you silly!  I never was proud to come in that old marble door!  I was always mad, away down inside, that I had to work here.  I had to go crawlin’ and askin’ fer a job, an’ take all their insults, an’ be locked in a trap.  Take it from me, there’s goin’ to be some awful accident happen here some day!  If a fire should break out how many d’you s’pose could get out before they was burned to a crisp?  Did you know them winders was nailed so they wouldn’t go up any higher ’n a foot?  Did you know they ’ain’t got ’nouf fire-escapes to get half of us out ef anythin’ happened?  Did you never take notice to the floor roun’ them three biggest old machines they’ve got up on the sixth?  I stepped acrost there this mornin’—­Mr. Brace sent me up on a message to the forewoman—­an’ that floor shook under my feet like a earthquake!  Sam Warner says the building ain’t half strong enough fer them machines, anyway.  He says they’d oughtta put ’em down on the first floor; but they didn’t want to ’cause they don’t show off good to visitors, so they stuck ’em up on the sixth, where they don’t many see ‘em.  But Sam says some day they’re goin’ to bust right through the floor, an’ ef they do, they ain’t gonta stop till they get clear down to the cellar, an’ they’ll wipe out everythin’ in their way when they go!  B’leeve me!  I don’t wantta be workin’ here when that happens!”

“Good night!” said Susie, turning pale.  “Them big machines on the sixth is right over where I work on the fifth!  Say, Katie, le’s ast Mr. Brace to put us on the other side the room!  Aw, gee!  Katie!  What’s the use o’ livin’?  I’d ‘most be willin’ to be dead jest to get cool!  Seems zif it’s allus either awful hot er awful cold!”

They went to their stifling tenements and their unattractive suppers.  They dragged their weary feet over the hot, dark pavements, laughing and talking boisterously with their comrades, or crowded into places of amusement to forget for a little while, then to creep back to toss the night out on a hard cot in breathless air or to creep to fire-escape or flat roof for a few brief hours of relief, till it was time to return to the vine-clad factory and its hot, noisy slavery for another day.