"Well, you'll get next to something soon," said Estelle. "What's your
line?"
I started to say "journalism." In Canada we never say "newspaper work."
Journalism seems a politer and more dignified term. To Estelle I said,
"I write," thinking that that would be clear; but it was not. She
thought I meant I wrote letters by hand, and she said at once:
"Say, if I were you, I'd learn type-writing. You can clip off ten words
on the machine to one you can write by hand, and it's dead easy to get
a job as a type-writer. Gee! I don't see how you expect to get anything
by writing! That's out of date now, girl. Say, where do you come from,
anyhow?"
Unconsciously, Estelle had given me an idea. Why should I not learn
type-writing? I was an expert at shorthand, and if I could teach myself
that, I could also teach myself type-writing. If a girl like Estelle
could get fifteen dollars a week for work like that, what could not I,
with my superior education--
Heavens and earth! compared with Estelle I called myself "educated," I
whose mind was a dismal abyss of appalling ignorance!
A type-writer, then, I determined to be. It was a come-down; but I felt
sure I would not need to do it for long. Estelle generously offered to
have a type-writer sent to our room (three dollars a month for a good
machine), and she said she would show me how to use it. In a few weeks,
she said, I would be ready for a position.
A few weeks! I intended to go to work at once. I had a hundred dollars
to pay back. Already I had used five of it. If I stayed here a few
weeks without working, it would rapidly disappear. Then, even when I
did get a position, suppose they gave me only a beginner's salary, how
could I do more than pay my board from that? The possibility of getting
that hundred dollars together again would then be remote, remote. And
if I could not get it, how, then, was I to see _him_ again?
I would stick to my first resolve. I would not write to him until I
could send him back that money--that dirty money. I felt that it stood
between us like a ghost.
I wonder if many girls suffer from this passionate sensitiveness about
money. Or was I exceptional? _He_ has said so, and yet I wonder.
I was determined to get work at once. I would learn and practise
type-writing at night, but I would not wait till I had learned it,
but look for work just the same through the day. Secretly I thought
to myself that if Estelle took three weeks in which to learn the
type-writer, as she said she did, I could learn it in two days. That
may sound conceited, but you do not know Estelle. I take that back. I
misjudged Estelle. Ignorant and slangy she may have been, but she was
sharp-witted, quick about everything, and so cheerful and good-humored
that I do not wonder she was able to keep her position for four or five
years. In fact, for the kind of house she was in--a clothing firm--she
was even an asset, for she "jollied" the customers and at times even
took the place of a model. She said she was "a perfect thirty-six, a
Veenis de Mylo."
Conceit carries youth far, and if I had not had that confidence in
myself, I should not have been able to do what I did.
All next day I tramped the streets of Chicago, answering advertisements
for "experienced" (mark that!) stenographers and type-writers. I was
determined never to be a "beginner." I would make a bluff at taking a
position, and just as I had made good with Mr. Campbell, so I felt I
should make good in any position I might take. I could not afford to
waste my time in small positions, and I argued that I would probably
lose them as easily as the better positions. So I might as well start
at the top.