Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/224

SUALLY, when a woman is confronted with a perplexing problem, she falls into a trance-like meditation. But not so with Elsie Simon. Whenever she had any difficulty to clear up in her mind, she always did it when her hands were the busiest.

Even now, while her fingers were busy executing a peacock color-design upon a sewing cabinet in the decorating apartments of Bradley and Hein Stamping Works, her alert brain grappled with a distressing equation. Perhaps, you would have noticed in her dark brown eyes just then a certain wistfulness that had no warrant to be there for the mere following of an airbrush. Perhaps, I said. For if you had been Lillian Holy, Elsie’s partner at that work unit, you would have been too busy greeting passersby and flirting with as many as were fain to join in to notice the eyes of your partner. Then, too, Elsie refrained from giving that opportunity to Lillian. Lillian! Why, Lillian was the very person who caused this disturbance in Elsie’s mind.

It developed this way. Albert Danko was such a wonderfully sensible young man! And Elsie could not help liking him. It was at Bradley Hein’s that she first met him, the first day she joined the factory force. He was working on a lathe at the time, and she remembered how politely he greeted her that afternoon.—so different he was from the other impudent factory men. She recalled with some pleasure how he had ruined an almost finished stand-support just when she got through acknowledging his ability. Moreover she noted that he did not anathematize every erring tool and object as so many others did.

Then often after that he stopped by her painting bench (which had been his a few years back) and gave her a few helpful pointers. which resulted in Elsie’s “turning in” the maximum quota of perfect panels within a very short time. Scarcely a day passed that Albert had not found time to linger a while to speak with Elsie. And she had grown to regard him the most sensible and likeable man of all her acquaintances. There were also memorable occasions when he had made himself more than likeable: as for instance the few times he had escorted her home on stormy “overtime” evenings; or the time she fell ill and he procured a taxi to take her home. Then, too, he had taken her to dances several times. But that all began a year and a half ago, a year before Lillian Holy came upon the scene. And then commenced the undoing.

When Lillian was given the position on Elsie’s unit, replacing Old Tom Surdy, the last of male decorators at Bradley and Hein’s, Elsie was pleased and happy. It was indeed consoling to know that one of your own racial group was to occupy the post so near you. So she and Lillian became fast friends and were, perhaps, the happiest and jolliest pair in