"Now, if you could just come up with a girl," Sally said.

"If I wanted to listen to my mother, I'd have gone to visit my mother," Reggie said. Everybody laughed. He held out his glass to Bill Foster. "You want to get me another drink? I know good and well my mother wouldn't." Everyone laughed again.

Sylvia Enos smoked in short, savage puffs. "That man!" she said.

Neither Sarah Wyckoff nor May Cavendish needed to ask about whom she was talking. "What did Frank do now?" Sarah asked.

"Felt me up," Sylvia snarled. "He hadn't bothered me for weeks, but this morning, all of a sudden, he grew more arms than an octopus. He came back to where I was working and he felt me up like I was a squash he was buying off a pushcart. I almost hauled off and belted him."

"You should have," Sarah said. "I would. I'd have knocked him into the middle of next week, too." With her formidable build, she could have done it.

May said, "He's been sniffing around Lillian for a while. He's probably been doing more than sniffing, too; she's a little chippy if I ever saw one." She sniffed herself, then went on, "But I haven't seen Lillian for the past couple days, and-"

"She quit," Sylvia said. "I heard one of the bookkeepers talking about it. She's moving out to California. It's good for your lungs out there."

"Well, if she quit, then Frank is going to be on the prowl for somebody new," May said. "We've watched it happen often enough now."

"Often enough to be good and sick of it," Sylvia said. "And I wish to heaven he wouldn't come sniffing around me. If he doesn't know by now that I don't feel like playing games, he's an even bigger fool than I think he is."

"He couldn't be a bigger fool than I think he is," Sarah Wyckoffsaid.

Sylvia took a big bite of her egg-salad sandwich. She wished she were a gigantic carnival geek, biting the head off of Frank Best instead of a chicken. Then she shook her head in bemuse-ment. He really had to be on her nerves, or she would never have come up with such a bizarre mental image.

She said, "I wish I could find another job. But how am I even supposed to look for one when I'm here five and a half days a week? And jobs aren't easy to come by, not like they were during the war."

"It's a nasty bind to be in, dearie," May said. "I hope it turns out all right for you."

"The worst he can do is fire me," Sylvia said. "Then I will have time to look for a new job. When he gets to be like this, I almost wish he would fire me. You girls are dears, but I wouldn't mind getting out of this place."

"What makes you think it would be different anywhere else?" May asked. "You'd still have a man for a boss, and you know what men are like."

"Careful," Sarah said in a low voice. Frank Best strolled past and waved to the women at their dinner break. He doubtless thought his smile was charming. As far as Sylvia was concerned, it was so greasy, it might have been carved from a block of lard.

She lit a new cigarette. The foreman favored her with another oleaginous smile when he returned from wherever he'd gone. "Almost time to get back to the line," he said.

"Yes, Mr. Best." Sylvia looked forward to returning to work about as much as she looked forward to going to the doctor to have a carbuncle lanced. Sometimes, though, she had to go to the doctor. And, when the whistle blew, she had to go back and paint red rings on galoshes.

Frank Best left her alone for twenty minutes after that, which was about fifteen minutes longer than she'd expected. Then he came back toward her with a pair of rubber overshoes in his hand. The rings on them were perfect. Sylvia had made a point of painting perfect rings since he'd started bothering her again, to give him as little excuse as she could.

But, being the foreman, he didn't necessarily need an excuse. Sylvia dipped her brush in the can of red paint by the line and painted two more perfect rings on the galoshes in front of her.

"Tried to slip these by on me, did you, Sylvia?" Best asked. He thrust the overshoes in his hand at her.

"I don't see anything wrong with them," Sylvia said.

That turned out to be a mistake-not that she had any right course. "Here. Take a closer look," Best said, and stepped up right alongside her. He brushed her breast with his arm as he brought the galoshes up and held them under her nose. That might have been an accident-had he not been bothering her all morning.

She took half a step back-and knocked over the can of red paint so that most of it spilled on his shoes. That might have been an accident-had he not been bothering her all morning.

"Oh, Mr. Best!" she exclaimed. "I'm so very sorry!" I'm so very sorry Ididn 't think of that a long time ago.

He jumped and hopped and used language no gentleman would have employed in the presence of a lady. He'd already proved he was no gentleman by treating Sylvia as if she were no lady. "You'd better watch yourself!" he said when something vaguely resembling coherence returned to his speech. "You'd better clean this mess up, and you'd better make sure nothing like it ever happens again, or you'll be out on the sidewalk so fast, it'll make your head spin."

"Yes, Mr. Best. I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Best," Sylvia said. The foreman stomped off, leaving a trail of red footprints.

Sylvia soaked up as much of the red paint in rags as she could. She got some on her hands, but none on her dress or shirtwaist- she was careful about them, where she hadn't cared at all about Best's shoes. She opened another can of paint and went right on giving galoshes red rings, too. If she hadn't done that, Best would have got another reason to come back and have a word with her.

As things worked out, he didn't speak to her for the rest of the day. That suited her fine. Women from all along the production line found excuses to come by and say hello, though. Under their breath, they found considerably more than hello to say, too. She got more congratulations than she'd had on any one day since Mary Jane was born. If any of the women had a good word to say about Frank Best, nobody said it where she could hear.

Sarah Wyckoff said, "That was even better than knocking his teeth down his throat, on account of it made him look like the fool he is."

May Cavendish added, "Now all the girls will be bringing paint to work, Sylvia, and it's your fault, nobody else's."

"Good," Sylvia said. May giggled.

When the closing whistle blew, Sylvia left the galoshes factory with a spring in her step that hadn't been there at quitting time for quite a while. She got her children off the school playground, and was far from the only mother doing so. The school didn't take care of children in the classrooms after teaching was done for the day, as it had during the war. But it did let kids play in the yard till their parents could pick them up. That was something, if not much.

"I'm frozen, Ma," George, Jr., said.

"Me, too," Mary Jane added. Half the time, she agreed with whatever her big brother said. The other half, she disagreed- violently. Sylvia never knew in advance which tack she would take.

"We'll be home soon," Sylvia said. "We've got the steam radiator, and I'll be cooking on the stove, too, so things will be nice and toasty. The more time you spend complaining here, the longer it'll be before you're back."

For a wonder, the kids got the message. In fact, they ran to the trolley stop ahead of her. She might have had a spring in her step, but they were children. They didn't need to spill paint on anybody to feel energetic.

After they all got back to the apartment, Sylvia boiled a lot of cabbage and potatoes and a little corned beef for supper. The vegetables were cheap; the corned beef wasn't. The children loved potatoes and ate cabbage only under protest. Sylvia had been the same way when she was small.