WHAT CHRISTMAS REALLY MEANS
THE Terrible Ten began it. Eleanor Watson had forgotten to bring either
peanuts or taffy to their class, and the Arithmetic lesson flagged in
consequence, until finally, in despair, she sent Rafael out to buy some
refreshments.
“How’s your father to-night, Pietro?” she asked, while they waited.
Pietro Senior had slipped on the ice on his way home from work and
sprained his wrist badly.
“Better, I tink,” Pietro reported stolidly, his thoughts all on peanuts
to come.
“Dat’s nottings--lit’ wrist splain,” Giuseppi announced. “My fader, he
had a hand cut off--so.”
“My fader go to de hospital. Hava big cutting.” Nicolo illustrated a
“big cutting” vividly with a dangerous swing of his villainous-looking
jack-knife.
“My moder she hava two operations dis year.”
“My sister she have tree.”
Rafael had arrived during the debate, but not even the bag of peanuts
he set down before Eleanor could distract attention from the bitter
rivalry in misfortune. In a minute Rafael too had caught the trend of
it.
“Waita lil minute,” he cried, glowering angrily round the circle.
“Looka my hand. Dat’s one. My lil sister she died dis year. My muvver
she go to hospital. And my big sister, she work to Cannon’s fer der
Christmas trade. She say she rather die, she so tired every night, an’
it get worse an’ worse an’ worse every day till it be Christmas.”
“Dat so,” agreed Pietro solemnly. “My sister she work dar too. Doan get
home till ten, leben o’clock.”
Cannon’s was the big cheap department store down near the station.
Eleanor took mental note of the Ten’s opinion of its treatment of
employees, and resolved to ask Mr. Thayer if the girls who worked there
really had such a hard time as their small brothers thought. Meanwhile
she stopped the ridiculous operation contest with many peanuts. The
Ten, being very bright boys, though ignorant of books, had speedily
discovered that the bigger numbers you could add right, the faster you
could secure large quantities of peanuts. Also, they humbly worshipped
the Lovely Lady, whom Rafael had refused to let them call “de peach.”
They came regularly to their class, they listened spellbound to the
adventures of Robin Hood, they wrote the names of Robin and all his
band--also their own and the Lovely Lady’s--without a slip, and when
Eleanor declared that nothing would make her so happy as to hear them
read the tale of King Arthur and his knights to her out of a book, they
set themselves at learning “dose queer book letters” with a will.
“First fellah dat bothers my Lovely Lada, I fixa him,” Rafael had
announced at the end of the third lesson.
“Why she your lovely lada?” demanded Pietro mockingly, dodging behind a
telegraph pole for safety.
“’Cause I lika her de most,” Rafael declared, “and she goan lika me de
most. You jus’ wait.”
But after that one assertion of proprietorship, he changed “my” to
“the,” and impressed the revision upon his friends and followers with
terrible threats. Rafael’s eyes were brown and melting, his voice was
of a liquid softness, his smile as sunny as the skies of his native
land. But when he scowled all the fierceness of Sicilian feuds and
vendettas flashed out of his deep eyes and straightened his mouth into
a cruel, hard line. No wonder the Ten shivered and cowered before the
wrath of Rafael, supplemented by the flash of a sharp little dagger
that Eleanor, who had been entirely reassured by Mr. Thayer, little
suspected the dearest of her dear, curly-haired comical Ten to be
carrying inside his gray shirt.
After the class that evening, Eleanor asked Mr. Thayer about Cannon’s.
“Well, I suppose they are pretty hard on their girls,” he said.
“Standing up all day waiting on tired, irritable customers who have to
make every penny count, with fifteen minutes off for lunch in the busy
season, can’t be exactly fun. Then in the evening I suppose they have
to go back to straighten up their stock of goods, move things around
to show them off better, trim up the windows, and so on. Christmas
means something quite different from a gay holiday with a big dinner
and a lot of pretty presents to those girls and to lots of others, Miss
Watson. If the Christmas rush is bad at Cannon’s, it must be perfect
torture in the big city shops.”
Next day Eleanor persuaded Madeline, who could always be detached from
her work to investigate a real novelty, to go with her to Cannon’s.
“If we want to ask the clerks any questions, you can do it safely
in Italian, or any other language,” Eleanor urged. “They’re mostly
foreigners, I think.”
Madeline nodded. “And I might find the type----” Her voice trailed off
into silence, and her face wore a far-away, inscrutable look. Writing
a play for Miss Dwight certainly made a person very absent-minded, and
one’s conversation very inconsecutive--also one’s actions. Madeline
suddenly decided to buy a hat, and dragged Eleanor from one shop to
another without finding anything to please her difficult taste, so that
it was almost dark when they reached Cannon’s.
The big store was packed with shoppers. The air was clammy and stale;
the counters were a mass of soiled and dingy merchandise. Tiny
cash-girls ran wearily to and fro, elbowing a difficult way through the
jam in the narrow aisles. Behind the counters pale-faced clerks eyed
the customers savagely, and attended with languid insolence to their
wants.
Eleanor sniffed the air daintily. “What an awful place, Madeline! Where
do all these shoppers come from? I don’t feel a bit as if I were in
Harding.”
“From Factory Hill, I suppose, and from across the tracks where the
French settlement is. Let’s go to the toy department and buy Fluffy a
doll. I’m sure they’ll have something unique to add to her collection.”
Eleanor stood near the door, hesitating. “It’s horribly smelly. You
don’t think we shall catch anything, do you?”
Madeline laughed. “You’d never do to go really and truly slumming,
Eleanor. No, we shan’t catch anything, probably. Come along. I thought
you wanted to investigate this place.”
So Eleanor bravely “came along.” They bought a penny doll for Fluffy,
from a sad-eyed little clerk who told them she was “tired most to death
working nights,” and then, when a floor-walker appeared suddenly from
around a corner, took it all back and declared loudly that business was
fine this year and she liked the rush of “somethin’ doin’.”
On the way down-stairs--Eleanor had firmly refused to get into one of
Cannon’s elevators--they came upon a girl crying bitterly.
“What’s the matter?” Madeline asked in the friendly, companionable way
that always got her answers.
“I’ve been fined again,” the girl sobbed. “Ten cents ain’t so much, but
neither is four dollars. That’s what I get. I’ve been fined three times
this week. What for? Why, once for being late in the morning--it’s
awful easy to sleep over when you’ve been working late at night--and
once for sitting down on the ledge behind the counter. It’s against the
rules to sit down, you know. And this time it was for talking back to
an inspector who said my check was wrong. It wasn’t. If it had been,
I’d have been fined for that.”
Eleanor had been hunting through her pocketbook.
“Please take this,” she said, “and don’t cry any more. Can’t you get
off to-night and have a good rest?”
The girl shook her head vigorously, smiling at Eleanor through her
tears. “I’d lose my job like that, ma’am. I ain’t any worse off than
the others; only it did make me sick to lose the money when I got so
many depending on me--my old grandmother and two kid brothers--and I
wanted to make a little Christmas for the kids. Thank you an awful lot,
ma’am.”
The girls went on their way fairly bursting with indignation.
“The idea of fining her for sitting down to rest!” sputtered Madeline.
“And for being late, when she’s worked half the night before, it’s
outrageous!”
Eleanor had quite forgotten the odors and the risk of infection. “Let’s
buy some ribbon,” she suggested. “That counter seems to be the hub of
the shopping fray.”
So they bought ribbon of a dark-eyed, dark-haired beauty who proved
to be Pietro’s sister. She beamed on Eleanor, and in the safe foreign
tongue confided to Madeline that Cannon’s was certainly a bad place
to work. She could look out for herself, she explained, flashing an
imperious glance at an inspector. She brought in lots of Italian trade,
and could interpret both in Italian and French for the women who hadn’t
learned English. So they treated her better. Oh, they fined her, of
course--that was the rule--and she worked most nights. But she was
pretty sure of keeping her place, whatever happened. That was a big
help. They should see the dirty hole of a lunch-room before they left,
she called gleefully after them, under the very eye of the fat little
man whom she had pointed out as Mr. Cannon. It was certainly “a big
help” to be able to utter wholesome truths like that with impunity.
“Let’s go and reason with him,” suggested Madeline, looking angrily
after the fat little proprietor. “Let’s make him take us to see the
dirty hole of a rest-room. Let’s threaten to boycott him if he doesn’t
reform his ways.”
Eleanor looked very much frightened. “We should only get the girls
we’ve talked to into trouble. The boycott wouldn’t work because we’ve
never bought anything anyway until to-day. I--I think I’m beginning to
feel faint, Madeline. Let’s go home and talk it over with Betty and Mr.
Thayer. They’ll think of just the right thing to do.”
But Mr. Thayer had gone to Boston, via Babbie Hildreth’s, and it was
Eugenia Ford’s plan that, after much discussion, was settled upon, for
the reason, as Madeline put it, that it was “just wild enough to work.”
So after chapel the next morning Eugenia, Georgia, and Fluffy--Straight
had tearfully decided not to cut Logic--chaperoned by Betty, appeared
at Cannon’s and asked to see the head of the firm.
“Good-morning, Mr. Cannon,” said Georgia in businesslike tones, when
he appeared. “We’ve got a proposition to make to you. We three are
Harding girls, and this is Miss Wales, secretary of the Student’s Aid
Society,--also proprietor of the Tally-ho Tea-Shop.”
“Indeed! Charmed to meet you, I’m sure.” The fat little man bowed low
and smiled a fatuous, oily smile. “Anything I can do in the way of
canned goods, crackers, sweets--to the sweet, ladies.” He bowed and
smiled again.
“We want to ask a favor,” pursued Georgia, utterly ignoring his
courtesies. “We all have pretty good times generally, and very merry
Christmases. We want other girls to have the same. We have just lately
realized how hard it is for salespeople just at this time of year--how
Christmas means to them just terribly hard work for little or no extra
pay--and we want to help at least a few of them. So we’ve gotten up a
petition about shopping early in the day, and early in the season, for
the Harding girls to sign. Now we also want to arrange to come down and
help some of your girls out. We want to take the places of three of
them every day from twelve to one, so that they can get a good rest at
noon, and also from five to six, so they can, if possible, do any extra
work they have then and so avoid night work. If not, they can at least
start fresh for the evening.”
Mr. Cannon stared at Georgia in utter amazement. Suddenly his fat face
grew red, and he shouted angrily, “Who’s been talkin’ to you? You know
an awful lot about my business, don’t you, now? You’d better clear out.”
“Without the canned goods and crackers and sweets--for the sweet?”
asked Fluffy gaily, looking down at him with her fascinating, insolent
smile.
“We’ve talked to no one, Mr. Cannon,” put in little Eugenia earnestly.
“And we mean to help you too, as is only fair, if you are good enough
to give us the chance to help the girls,” added Betty, with quiet
dignity.
Mr. Cannon glowered at the circle of pretty, serious, half-frightened
faces.
“You don’t know nothing about clerking,” he sputtered at last. “Nice
mess you’d make of your hours! Nice kind of help you’d hand out to me!”
“I was a waitress once,” Fluffy informed him calmly, winking at Betty.
“The young woman I worked for said I was very good at it. Besides, all
my little friends came and patronized me. If you’ll let me try, I’ll
ask them to patronize me here.”
“We don’t expect pay,” Georgia explained, “and the first day we come
we’d just be extras, watching to see what our duties would be.”
“Don’t be silly, Mr. Cannon,” urged Fluffy, who was never in the
least daunted by opposition. “We’ll accomplish more in an hour than
these poor dragged-out girls ever do--even if we don’t understand the
difficult art of clerking,” she added maliciously. “And they’ll do more
in their afternoons, after they’ve had a chance to rest. What you want
is your money’s worth, isn’t it? The best service for the smallest
wages. Don’t----”
“See here,” Mr. Cannon cut her short, “let’s have a little talk. What
did you come here for to-day?” He pointed a pudgy finger at Fluffy, who
explained once more, in picturesque phrases, the idea they had had in
coming to interview him.
“You say you’ve been a waitress?”
Fluffy nodded, winking solemnly again at Betty.
“You’re not a labor organizer?”
With equal solemnity she denied the charge.
“Far as I can see, you’re more or less luny. If you want to, you can
try. Come to-day at twelve. If you get along, maybe the others can
take hold. Some o’ my girls are fagged, for sure, and if your little
friends, as you call them, come in, that’ll help some. I’ve always
said,” added Mr. Cannon proudly, “that if I could once get the college
trade to swing my way, I could keep it. Honest values for cash is my
motto.” And with a curt little nod he started off.
“Wait!” Fluffy arrested his progress. “You mean I’m to come and not the
others?”
Mr. Cannon nodded. “As the most likely specimen. I don’t believe in
beginning any new experiment on too sumptoos a scale.” This time he was
irrevocably gone.
Fluffy wore a comical air of dismay. “Gracious! Doing it all alone
isn’t at all my idea of a stunt. I shall be terribly scared and lonely.
Straight’s got to spend the entire hour buying things of me. Oh, dear!
She can’t, because it’s a cash store and we haven’t any money left. I
wonder, if I should tell him I had a twin, whether he wouldn’t let her
try to-day too.”
“No time,” said Georgia firmly. “Psych. 6 beckons. But you shan’t be
deserted. We’ll take up a contribution for Straight to spend.”
Fluffy’s experiment in social service was the sensation of the Harding
morning. Promptly at twelve she appeared, and was given the place of
a wan little girl behind the ribbon counter. Ten minutes later--she
had stipulated for that interval in which to learn how to “work” her
cash-book--the “college trade” appeared in the persons of a lively
delegation conducted by the triumphant Straight, all eagerness to
display her adored twin in this new and exciting rôle. They bought
ribbons recklessly, with much delicious professional encouragement
from Fluffy. They smiled cheerfully upon Mr. Cannon, who lurked in
the offing, watching the progress of his “new experiment” with amazed
interest. Piloted by Eleanor Watson, they ascended to the doll counter,
and provided themselves with souvenirs of the occasion in the shape of
dancing dolls which twirled fascinatingly about a central magnet on top
of a little tin box. There had been nothing so nice at the regular
toy store, they declared loudly, for Mr. Cannon’s benefit. At one they
escorted the weary Fluffy triumphantly to the Tally-ho for luncheon.
“He tried to hire me for all the afternoons,” explained Fluffy proudly,
“and he says the rest of you may come, and Straight too, seeing she’s
my twin; but no more. He doesn’t believe in trying noo experiments on
too sumptoos a scale,” mimicked Fluffy joyously.
A good many things besides the easing of the lots of a few tired
sales-girls came of the “noo experiment.” One was a queer friendship
that sprang up between Fluffy and Mr. Cannon, cemented by a compact,
on Fluffy’s part, hereafter to “trade for cash,” which Mr. Cannon
considered the only honest way of living, and, on Mr. Cannon’s, to
accept Mr. Thayer’s offer of rooms in the club-house where classes in
embroidery and music and some amusement clubs might be enjoyed by Mr.
Cannon’s girls. Then Madeline’s “Sunday Special” article on the Harding
girls’ practical way of helping those less fortunate was copied and
discussed through the whole country; and many women and men who had
never given the matter a thought before realized that shop-girls are
human and began treating them as if they were.
Meanwhile Betty Wales, seeing another application of the same
principle, got together the committee on the Proper Excitement of the
Idle Rich and made them a proposition.
“A store in New York wants two thousand ploshkin candle-shades before
Christmas. They won’t handle less than a thousand. Six Morton Hall
girls are working their heads off to get them ready in time--that means
that the last shipment must go by the fifteenth. Why can’t you help
them out by having some candle-shade bees?”
“I haven’t had a chance to do one thing for Christmas myself,” objected
Georgia sadly.
“Do you usually make all your presents?” demanded Mary Brooks
incisively. “You know you never touch one of them. As the presiding
genius of the gift-shop department and the one and only Perfect Patron
of the Tally-ho I am bound to help this Excitement along. It’s simply
absurd for you to rush down to Cannon’s every day, and then refuse to
help the girls in this very college who are just as tired and just as
much tied down by this horrible Christmas tradition of buying things
all in a heap, regardless of the people who have to make them then, or
starve. The first bee can be at my house,” ended Mary sweetly, “and
there will be perfectly good refreshments.”
The bees accomplished wonders, but it was still a struggle to finish
the candle-shades in time; and when the Thorn cut her hand and the
wound got poisoned and wouldn’t heal, things seemed nearly hopeless.
But little Eugenia Ford came nobly to the rescue. “There’s no rule
against getting up at three in the morning,” she said, and for six
consecutive days she woke herself heroically at that hour, and cut,
pasted, and put together candle-shades until dawn, hardly taking time
for breakfast, but never neglecting her college work--she had learned
her lesson about that.
At three o’clock on the afternoon of Sunday, the sixteenth, Eugenia
hung out a busy sign and curled up on her couch for a much needed nap.
When she woke again, it was almost dark. She had promised to go to
Vespers with Helena Mason.
“I’m afraid I’m late, but she might have called for me,” reflected
Eugenia, getting rapidly into a trailing blue broadcloth dress, which,
with a big plumed hat, silver-fox furs, and a huge bunch of violets,
was calculated to make a very favorable impression upon the Vespers
audience.
When she was ready, Eugenia consulted a diminutive watch. “Quarter to
seven!” Her expression of consternation gave way suddenly to relief. “I
remember now that it was two hours fast. No--I changed it. Well, it’s
surely all wrong.” Eugenia dashed down the hall to Helena Mason’s room.
Her hurried knock was answered by a rather grudging “Come in.”
“I’m very sorry to be late,” Eugenia began apologetically.
Miss Mason sat at her desk, writing busily. She turned her head at
last, and stared hard at Eugenia.
“I should say you were early myself,” she observed, “but why the plumes
and the train?”
Eugenia seized a tiny alarm clock that stood on the floor by the bed,
which, for some strange reason, was not made up--at Vespers time on
Sunday.
“It is quarter to seven,” she cried aghast. “Why didn’t you call me,
and why isn’t it dark, and what do you mean by saying I’m early for
Vespers?”
“Eugenia Ford, are you crazy?” inquired Miss Mason sternly.
Poor Eugenia looked ready to cry. “I don’t think I am. Tell me what I’m
early for, please.”
“Breakfast, of course,” explained Miss Mason. “I got up at six to copy
this theme. It’s now almost seven--there’s the rising bell this minute.
As for Vespers, now you speak of it I do remember that you promised to
call for me, but I went to the Westcott for dinner yesterday and to
Vespers right from there, without ever thinking of our engagement.”
Eugenia sank down limply on the disheveled bed. “Then I’ve slept since
three o’clock yesterday,” she announced tragically, “in my kimono, on
top of my couch, you know. I never heard of such a thing, did you?”
The Thorn certainly never had, and she was much impressed.
“I always supposed that rich girls like Miss Ford just thought of
clothes and dances and traveling and a good time generally,” she
confided to Betty. “I never thought one of them would wear herself out
helping poor little me. You’ve got to be pretty tired to sleep like
that. I shall always feel differently about rich girls after this.”
And she kept her word. The Thorn’s sharp point was dulled. Instead of
being a faultfinder and an agitator she threw her influence, which
for some obscure reason was considerable, on the side of harmony and
good-fellowship.
“I’ve told the third floor to stop spying on Esther Bond,” she informed
Betty. “I’m convinced myself that she studies out loud, and for some
queer reason doesn’t want it known. She’s awfully secretive. That
Helena Mason goes up to see her quite a lot. You’d think she’d be proud
of knowing a prominent girl like Miss Mason, but she smuggles her in
and out as if she was a poor relation. All the same, I guess the way
she acts is her own affair. She hasn’t said much, but she must know
she’s being watched, and I’ve advised them all to stop it. She looks
as if she had troubles enough without that. I’ve been reading up about
ghosts, and they do seem to be pretty much made up, specially all those
seen by several people at one time. Did Miss Dick’s school ever find
out about theirs?”
Betty shook her head. “The poor little girl who got the most frightened
by it has been terribly ill. They thought last week that she was going
to die, but she’s much better now.”
“Some other girl must be feeling pretty bad, if it was done for a
joke,” said the Thorn.
“Yes,” agreed Betty, “but Miss Dick thinks it was an accident--and
little Shirley’s strong imagination, of course. I hope she’s right. And
thank you for taking Miss Bond’s part. We don’t want our silly ghosts
to hurt any one’s feelings or make any girl sorry she came to Morton
Hall.”