"I don't know. I've never been to one."
"Well-doesn't matter.... Another thing-some day, when you come to know more men-Know many?"
"Very few."
"Well, you'll find this town is full of bright young men seeking an economical solution of the sex problem-to speak politely-and you'll find it a relief not to have them on your door-step. 'S safe here.... Come in with me, kid. Give me an audience to talk to."
"Yes," said Una.
§ 2
It was hard to leave the kindly Herbert Grays of the flat, but Una made the break and arranged all her silver toilet-articles-which consisted of a plated-silver hair-brush, a German-silver nail-file, and a good, plain, honest rubber comb-on the bureau in Mrs. Lawrence's room.
With the shyness of a girl on her first night in boarding-school, Una stuck to Mrs. Lawrence's side in the noisy flow of strange girls down to the dining-room. She was used to being self-absorbed in the noisiest restaurants, but she was trembly about the knees as she crossed the room among curious upward glances; she found it very hard to use a fork without clattering it on the plate when she sat with Mrs. Lawrence and four strangers, at a table for six.
They all were splendidly casual and wise and good-looking. With no men about to intimidate them-or to attract them-they made a solid phalanx of bland, satisfied femininity, and Una felt more barred out than in an office. She longed for a man who would be curious about her, or cross with her, or perform some other easy, customary, simple-hearted masculine trick.
But she was taken into the friendship of the table when Mrs. Lawrence had finished a harangue on the cardinal sin of serving bean soup four times in two weeks.
"Oh, shut up, Lawrence, and introduce the new kid!" said one girl.
"You wait till I get through with my introductory remarks, Cassavant. I'm inspired to-night. I'm going to take a plate of bean soup and fit it over Ma Fike's head-upside down."
"Oh, give Ma Fike a rest!"
Una was uneasy. She wasn't sure whether this repartee was friendly good spirits or a nagging feud. Like all the ungrateful human race, she considered whether she ought to have identified herself with the noisy Esther Lawrence on entering the Home. So might a freshman wonder, or the guest of a club; always the amiable and vulgar Lawrences are most doubted when they are best-intentioned.
Una was relieved when she was welcomed by the four:
Mamie Magen, the lame Jewess, in whose big brown eyes was an eternal prayer for all of harassed humanity.
Jennie Cassavant, in whose eyes was chiefly a prayer that life would keep on being interesting-she, the dark, slender, loquacious, observant child who had requested Mrs. Lawrence to shut up.
Rose Larsen, like a pretty, curly-haired boy, though her shoulders were little and adorable in a white-silk waist.
Mrs. Amesbury, a nun of business, pale and silent; her thin throat shrouded in white net; her voice low and self-conscious; her very blood seeming white-a woman with an almost morbid air of guarded purity, whom you could never associate with the frank crudities of marriage. Her movements were nervous and small; she never smiled; you couldn't be boisterous with her. Yet, Mrs. Lawrence whispered she was one of the chief operators of the telephone company, and, next to the thoughtful and suffering Mamie Magen, the most capable woman she knew.
"How do you like the Tempest and Protest, Miss Golden?" the lively Cassavant said, airily.
"I don't-"
"Why! The Temperance and Protection Home."
"Well, I like Mrs. Fike's shoes. I should think they'd be fine to throw at cats."
"Good work, Golden. You're admitted!"
"Say, Magen," said Mrs. Lawrence, "Golden agrees with me about offices-no chance for women-"
Mamie Magen sighed, and "Esther," she said, in a voice which must naturally have been rasping, but which she had apparently learned to control like a violin-"Esther dear, if you could ever understand what offices have done for me! On the East Side-always it was work and work and watch all the pretty girls in our block get T. B. in garment-factories, or marry fellows that weren't any good and have a baby every year, and get so thin and worn out; and the garment-workers' strikes and picketing on cold nights. And now I am in an office-all the fellows are dandy and polite-not like the floor superintendent where I worked in a department store; he would call down a cash-girl for making change slow-! I have a chance to do anything a man can do. The boss is just crazy to find women that will take an interest in the work, like it was their own you know, he told you so himself-"
"Sure, I know the line of guff," said Mrs. Lawrence. "And you take an interest, and get eighteen plunks per for doing statistics that they couldn't get a real college male in trousers to do for less than thirty-five."
"Or put it like this, Lawrence," said Jennie Cassavant. "Magen admits that the world in general is a muddle, and she thinks offices are heaven because by comparison with sweat-shops they are half-way decent."
The universal discussion was on. Everybody but Una and the nun of business threw everything from facts to bread pills about the table, and they enjoyed themselves in as unfeminized and brutal a manner as men in a café. Una had found some one with whom to talk her own shop-and shop is the only reasonable topic of conversation in the world; witness authors being intellectual about editors and romanticism; lovers absorbed in the technique of holding hands; or mothers interested in babies, recipes, and household ailments.
After dinner they sprawled all over the room of Una and Mrs. Lawrence, and talked about theaters, young men, and Mrs. Fike for four solid hours-all but the pretty, boyish Rose Larsen, who had a young man coming to call at eight. Even the new-comer, Una, was privileged to take part in giving Rose extensive, highly detailed, and not entirely proper advice-advice of a completeness which would doubtless have astonished the suitor, then dressing somewhere in a furnished room and unconscious of the publicity of his call. Una also lent Miss Larsen a pair of silk stockings, helped three other girls to coerce her curly hair, and formed part of the solemn procession that escorted her to the top of the stairs when the still unconscious young man was announced from below. And it was Una who was able to see the young man without herself being seen, and to win notoriety by being able to report that he had smooth black hair, a small mustache, and carried a stick.
Una was living her boarding-school days now, at twenty-six. The presence of so many possible friends gave her self-confidence and self-expression. She went to bed happy that night, home among her own people, among the women who, noisy or reticent, slack or aspiring, were joined to make possible a life of work in a world still heavy-scented with the ideals of the harem.
CHAPTER XII
That same oasis of a week gave to Una her first taste of business responsibility, of being in charge and generally comporting herself as do males. But in order to rouse her thus, Chance broke the inoffensive limb of unfortunate Mr. Troy Wilkins as he was stepping from his small bronchial motor-car to an icy cement block, on seven o'clock of Friday evening.
When Una arrived at the office on Saturday morning she received a telephone message from Mr. Wilkins, directing her to take charge of the office, of Bessie Kraker, and the office-boy, and the negotiations with the Comfy Coast Building and Development Company regarding the planning of three rows of semi-detached villas.
For three weeks the office was as different from the treadmill that it familiarly had been, as the Home Club and Lawrence's controversial room were different from the Grays' flat. She was glad to work late, to arrive not at eight-thirty, but at a quarter to eight, to gallop down to a cafeteria for coffee and a sandwich at noon, to be patient with callers, and to try to develop some knowledge of spelling in that child of nature, Bessie Kraker. She walked about the office quickly, glancing proudly at its neatness. Daily, with an operator's headgear, borrowed from the telephone company, over her head, she spent half an hour talking with Mr. Wilkins, taking his dictation, receiving his cautions and suggestions, reassuring him that in his absence the Subway ran and Tammany still ruled. After an agitated conference with the vice-president of the Comfy Coast Company, during which she was eloquent as an automobile advertisement regarding Mr. Wilkins's former masterpieces with their "every modern improvement, parquet floors, beam ceilings, plate-rack, hardwood trim throughout, natty and novel decorations," Una reached the zenith of salesman's virtues-she "closed the deal."