noon
Out of the doors of these houses came men and women and boys and girls , who hurried as we hurried , and with a word to some , a wave of her uplifted hand to others , a blank stare at others again , Lucy seemed leading a long procession . Around each corner and from every car that passed came more `` Hands , '' and each morning when the factory was reached a crowd that jammed its entrance and extended half a block up and down the street was waiting for the opening of the door , out of which it would not come until darkness fell again . For the first day or two I was noticed with indifference on the part of some , resentment on the part of others , but on the third day , as I took my place in the pushing , laughing , growling crowd that made its way up several flights of stairs to the big room where shabby clothes are changed for yet shabbier working ones , my good-mornings were greeted with less grudging acknowledgments , and now we are quite friendly , these `` Hands '' and I , and through their eyes I am seeing myself and others like me -- seeing much and many things from an angle never used before . They nodded to me less hesitatingly as the days went by , and at the noon hour , when I have my lunch with first one group and then another , I find them , on the whole , frank and outspoken , find they have as decided opinions concerning what they term people like that -- which term is usually accompanied by a gesture in the direction where I once lived -- as said people have concerning them , to whom , as a rule , they also refer in much the same manner and with the same words . With each group on either side of its separating gulf the conviction is firm that little is to be hoped for or expected from the other , and common qualities are forgotten in the realization of distinctive differences . `` What 's the most you ever made a week ? '' The girl who asked the question moved up for me to sit on the bench beside her , and , unwrapping a newspaper parcel , took from it a large cucumber pickle , a piece of cheese , a couple of biscuits , and half of a cocoanut pie , and laid them on a table in front of her .