EARNING A LIVING
We were up bright and early the next morning. I was dressed and tenderly
cared for, with my easy chair dragged into the bay window, where I could
command a view of the street east and west as far as the eye could
reach. A housemaid, whose duty it was in the morning to do up the
Tuckers' apartment, was cautioned to look in on me every half-hour to
see that I wanted for nothing.
"Zebedee would kill us for leaving you this way," declared Dum as she
embraced me good-by. "Nothing but the exigencies of the case excuse us."
"'My poverty and not my will consents,'" quoted Dee. "We'll be in for
lunch. We've got to eat, and it might just as well be here." The maid
was instructed to bring a generous supply of lunch up to the apartment
at one o'clock. "If we have it up here I won't have to wash my face. I
have worked so hard to make the dirt on it look casual that I can't
contemplate going all over it again."
Of course my meals had to be brought up to me from the cafe because of
my old ankle, and the girls often had theirs brought up, too, although
they preferred going down as a rule. They insisted they missed too many
tricks by having them sent up. "No second and third helps to pie, and
the one help you get too dainty for us."
"Look out the window for me every ten minutes or so and pray that Henry
won't get cranky and have to be cranked and have me expose my skirts to
the rude gaze of the public," begged Dee as she hugged me good-by. She
had to forego the kiss as she was afraid of rubbing off her dirty
make-up, and I was quite willing to have it thus. Brindle, her beloved
bulldog, was not so squeamish as I, however, and gave her an
affectionate and disastrous lick. "Brindle can keep you company, honey.
Good-by, darling," to the dog. "I'm going to take you down to your
household necessity, Dum, and I am going to do it for nothing, too. I am
loaded to the guards with gas. I reckon I won't put out my sign until I
get downtown. I'll start my trade from down there."
Dum had lettered the jitney sign for her the evening before. It was most
artistic, done in large blue letters on white cardboard:
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| MONUMENT AVENUE |
| |
| 5c JITNEY 5c |
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Dee was not a day too soon in her venture, for already the authorities
were taking the matter of the jitney business in hand, and the privilege
of running a jitney without special license and a $5,000 bond was on the
verge of being withdrawn from the legion of owners of broken-down Fords.
My morning was far from dull. The attentive maid came popping in every
few minutes, I had a pile of new magazines and papers, and there was the
never-dying excitement of watching for Dee and her blue-and-white sign.
On her return trip, after taking Dum to the household necessities, she
had a lone passenger--certainly not enough money in that to pay for the
gas; but on the downtown trip she caught many an early worm, and her car
was actually running over. At that time there were no rules about
standing on the steps and overcrowding, and Dee had taken in every one
who had raised a finger. I counted thirty-five cents, which was going
some for a five-passenger car. Dee had a small plaid shawl which she had
wrapped around her legs to conceal her skirt. She looked as much like a
boy as Zebedee himself must have at her age. She never forgot to look up
at my window, and, on seeing me, would touch her cap in a most
gentlemanly way, a grin on her funny, dirty face.
Up to nine-thirty her downtown trips were all crowded, while her
outgoing ones were but sparsely patronized. Then there was a lull in
her traffic until about eleven, when the shoppers began to pour
downtown. Women and babies! women and babies! Sometimes women and dogs!
Brindle, who never left the window, and seemed to be watching for Dee
and Henry Ford as eagerly as I was, resented the dogs very much. He felt
that his rightful place was in that car, and any dog who dared get in it
was to be disciplined through the window glass if he could not reach him
in any other way.
Every time Dee raised her dirty face and grinned at us Brindle would
tremble all over with excitement and joy. I trembled, too, for fear that
he would break the great pane of glass, he scratched on it with such
vigor.
Before the hordes of shoppers were disposed of the men and business
women began to jitney their way back to their homes for luncheon. It was
actually almost one o'clock. I could hardly believe it. The morning had
been fraught with excitement to me as I had kept account of Dee's
earnings, and in watching for her and keeping up with her gains I had
had little time for literature.
At one o'clock sharp, Henry Ford, shorn of his gorgeous blue-and-white
placard, parked in front of the apartment house, and in a moment a
breathless and excited Dee was hugging first Brindle and then me, quite
careless of her make-up.
"Gee, but I am tired and hungry! It is a sin to be wasting all those
fares. Just see how crowded the jitneys are! But I am so hungry I'm
fittin' to bust. Where's Dum? Here, count my earnings while I scrape off
enough dirt to eat." She poured into my lap a pile of silver and
nickels.
"Four dollars and fifteen cents!" I called to her in the bathroom, where
she was punishing her begrimed face. "I counted more than that; I kept
watching and saw you every time you passed."
"Oh, yes, I took a load of old soldiers out to the Soldiers' Home for
nothing. I gave them the time of their lives. They were so tickled, I
took them down and back again. That made sixty cents short."
That was so like Dee and explained the many old men I had seen in the
car.
Dum came bursting in just as the maid brought a tray laden with food.
"Lord love us, but I'm tired! I have had a rip-roaring time, though. I
can get off a spiel that would sell household novelties to Fiji
Islanders. Mrs. Rand has taken like hot cakes, and the batty-cake turner
went with it to turn those cakes." She had with her a disreputable-looking
canvas telescope that contained her samples. Her job was to go from
house to house and take orders, to be delivered later. Her pocket was
bursting with signed agreements to pay for said wares on delivery.
"Here, Page, please count 'em up and see how rich I am. What did you
make, Dee? I am dying to hear all about your morning! You tell first and
then I'll tell."
"I made four dollars and fifteen cents. I can't tell you about my
morning now because I've got to eat with my mouth. I'm missing fares
until it makes me sick," and Dee jumped into her lunch with such vim
that Dum and I deemed it wiser to eat, too, for fear there would be
nothing left from the voracious jitneur.
"Henry did not have to be cranked but once, and that was when we were at
the end of the line up at Robinson Street and there were no passengers
in. I bumped over a high car track, and you know how indignant that
makes old Henry. I was awfully glad I had just dumped my last fare. Not
a soul saw my skirts." This was mumbled with a full mouth as Dee
steadily stoked up, accomplishing in about ten minutes one of the
largest meals I ever saw.
"Dee, I am afraid you will have apoplexy or something," Dum
remonstrated.
But Dee declared that a workingman must eat a lot. She could easily
digest anything she could accommodate, and she was not quite full yet.
Finding I had not tasted my consomme, for being shut up as I was my
appetite was nothing to boast of, Dee drank it down on top of cocoanut
pie and currant jelly, the dessert she had just finished.
"To fill up the cracks!" she exclaimed, and with a whirl she was out of
the apartment and back in her jitney once more, alert for fares.
"Isn't she a great girl, though?" said Dum, a little wistfully.
"Four-fifteen was a good haul. Have you counted up my pledges yet?"
"Yes, you have twenty-seven. At five cents apiece that makes one dollar
thirty-five cents. That's not a bad morning's work."
"No, that's not so bad, and maybe I can do better this afternoon. I am
going to kick for another part of town tomorrow. They gave me the
swellest part of Franklin Street, and so many of the houses were where
our friends live that it was hard to be businesslike. I put it up to
them as a perfectly businesslike proposition, however, and would not let
them sign up unless they wanted my wares for their own sake, not mine. I
had an awful time with your cousin, Park Garnett. She made out she did
not know me, and I did not force my acquaintance on her, but I just
talked and talked and made her look at everything I had--Mrs. Rand,
batty-cake flapper, and all the needle-threaders, spot-knockers, and
silver polish--and, what's more, I did not leave her ugly, ponderous old
house until I had made her sign up for fifteen cents' worth of household
necessities--I mean fifteen cents for me. I expatiated on Mrs. Rand
until there was nothing for her to do but own one, and I played
battledore and shuttlecock with her ball of gray yarn (of course she was
knitting another shawl with purple scallops) and the batty-cake turner
until she was dizzy and would have signed up to get me out of the house,
I think. She bought some silver polish, too, because I took her fat old
pug up in my lap and showed her how much his collar needed rubbing.
Jeremiah, the blue-gummed butler, was fascinated by my wares, and kept
tiptoeing back into the room to fix the fire or pretend he heard the
bell or something. That put it into my head to make the rest of the
rounds in the backs of the houses, where the servants can see my
novelties, and I had fine luck. I am going to stick to the alleys and
back doors all afternoon."
Dum was, as usual, perfectly open and straightforward, with absolutely
no idea of concealing her identity. I had not dreamed that she was
contemplating going into the homes of her friends and acquaintances with
her peddling job. I couldn't help wondering what Mr. Tucker would say to
it. He was accustomed to the scrapes of his progeny and used to say just
so long as they told the truth and kept out of jail, he could stand it;
but these new escapades did seem to be a little more serious than any
they had heretofore plunged into. They were certainly not doing anything
wrong from a moral standpoint, but they were giving Mrs. Grundy a chance
to do a lot of gabbling. I could not help laughing over Cousin Park,
although I secretly wished that Dum could have started her back-door
canvassing before she reached that ponderous edifice belonging to my
relative. It merely meant that Mrs. Garnett would have some tangible
grievance against my friends, for whom she held a prejudice that no
politeness on their part seemed to do away with. Certainly Zebedee had
been very kind and pleasant to her on several occasions, and he had been
quite attentive to her on that memorable picnic the summer before. He
had also done all that was required of him toward entertaining her
guest, Mabel Binks, in the early part of the winter. In fact, Tweedles
and I felt that he had done more than common politeness required toward
the amusement of that flashy young woman.
"Did you tell Cousin Park I was in town?" I asked.
"No, indeed; I never claimed acquaintance with her, I tell you! She made
out that she had never seen me before and I fell in with her mood and
just be'ed an agent, only that and nothing more. Sometimes I think maybe
she really did not know me. You know she won't wear glasses all the time
and I believe her eye-sight is bad."
I devoutly hoped this to be the case. I had not informed Cousin Park of
my presence in Richmond and had father's consent to this concealment, as
we both of us knew that she would be tearing around and drag me out of
the Tuckers' apartment and incarcerate me in her prison-like mansion,
whether I would or no. Father and I felt the same way about her house.
Father always said he was afraid the butler, Jeremiah, would bite him,
and every one brought up by a mammy knew that "to be bit by a
blue-gummed nigger was certain death." Jeremiah was really a very nice
old man in spite of his lugubrious air of officiating at your funeral
while he was actually serving the very heavy viands with which Mrs.
Garnett's oiled walnut table was laden.
"Maybe she didn't know you, after all," I ventured cheerfully.
"Well, if she didn't or did, it is all one to me. I don't have to
deliver the novelties, as that is done by some trustworthy person
employed steadily by the boss, and in the meantime I have earned
fifteen cents at the funereal mansion. I must tear myself away now and
begin a systematic visiting of the back doors of the homes fronting
Monroe Park. Good-by, honey," and Dum, too, was gone.
Brindle and I were left to watch for the meteoric appearances of Dee and
to get through the afternoon as best we might.
Dee did a thriving business. As the afternoon went on she never passed
without a car full and sometimes running over. Her face was tense and as
often as not she forgot to look up and salute Brindle and me.
"She will be a tired little girl when the day is over," I said to
Brindle, and he wagged his tail and snuffled his appreciation of my
noticing him. Dee had just passed, the back seat of Henry two-deep with
passengers and on the front seat a very dressy looking young woman who
seemed to be sitting very close to the stern young jitneur. That was one
of the times Dee had forgotten to look up and poor Brindle was in deep
distress.