It was that night that I begun this book. I'd brought in a loaf of bread
and a little warming pan and a can of baked beans. We het the beans over
the gas-jet and made a good supper--the water in the wash pitcher was
all right to drink. Then Mis' Bingy went to bed with the baby, and I got
out the paper I'd fixed, and I started. It seemed as though I must. I
had the feeling that I wanted to get out from the place I was in. Home,
when I felt like that, I used to sweep the parlor or shampoo my hair, or
try to get Father to leave me earn some money, helping him. Once I took
my egg money and started lessons on our organ. But such things don't get
you anywheres. And it seemed as though the book would help.
I didn't know anything to write about, only just me. It come to me that
I ought to tell about me. But nothing worth writing had ever happened
to me till just that morning. So I started in, and wrote near all
night--down to the part where we got to the city. The gas smelled bad. I
always remember that night. Before I knew it, it was getting light in
the window. Then I put up the paper and crawled over back of Mis' Bingy
and the baby, and went to sleep. And when I went to sleep, and when I
woke up in the morning, the same thing was in my head right along--that
mebbe I could get to be enough different so's I could see him again,
some day. Because I knew I wasn't never going to let him see me again
while I was the way I was now. But I wondered how to get different.
"Mis' Bingy," I says next morning, "how do folks get different?"
"Hard work and trouble, mostly," she says.
"I don't mean backward," I says. "I mean frontward."
She shook her head. "I donno," she says. "I used to think about that,
some."
We had the rest of the beans and bread, and then I started out. After
she got the baby dressed, Mis' Bingy was going out to set in the green
place where we'd been yesterday.
"I could work," she says, "if it wasn't for the baby. She's lots of
work, too. But that don't earn us nothing."
She was always making lace, and she'd brought along a lot she made--the
bottom drawer of the washstand was full of it. Making that, and tending
the baby, kep' her occupied; but, as she said, it didn't earn us
anything.
I had the other card that Mr. Ember had given me, and that morning I
started out to find the man. John Carney, the name was, and it was a
long ways to walk. It was in a big office building. And when I got to
the right door, a smart young guy behind a fence says, What did I want
to see Mr. Carney about, and wouldn't one of the men in the office do? I
just give him Mr. Ember's card to take in, and when he'd gone I felt
glad; because if it had been the day before, when I hadn't seen that
room full of folks nor heard the woman in the pinkish dress speak like
she done, I bet I'd of said to that young guy: "You go and chase
yourself to the pasture and quit your fresh lip." Just like Lena Curtsy
would have said.
I had to wait quite a while till they sent for me. And when I went in
the office, long and like a parlor in a picture, I stood in front of a
big gray man whose shoulders were the principal part. And there was a
little young man there, sitting loose in a big easy chair, looking at a
newspaper. I noticed the little young man particular, because he didn't
look like anything, and he acted like so much. He didn't belong in the
office. He just happened.
"What can I do for you, madam?" says the big gray man, with Mr. Ember's
card in his hand. "Mr. Carney is absent in Europe."
"Oh," I says, "then I don't know. Mr. Ember thought Mr. Carney'd maybe
help me to get a job."
The little young man spoke up.
"I expect you'll meet up with a good deal of that kind of thing, Bliss,"
he says, glancing up from his newspaper and glancing down again.
"Everybody sends 'em to my uncle. He--makes it a point to know of
things. He's a regular employment agency, d'y'see, for the jobless
friends of his friends. I--er--shouldn't let it bother me."
The big gray man was real nice and regretful.
"I'm genuinely sorry," he said. "I really am. I happen to know Ember a
little--I'd be glad to oblige him. But this--we don't need a thing here.
I'm sorry Mr. Carney is away. It's unfortunate, but he _is_ away, for
some months."
He said a few more things polite, and he took down my name and address
and said if anything _should_ turn up.... And I happened to think of
something. If we had to wait very long, it might bother some about the
rent.
"You don't think it would be very long, do you?" I says. "On account of
Mis' Bingy and my rent."
"I wish I could promise something more," says the big gray man, looking
back on his desk papers. "I'm sorry. Good morning."
I didn't think till afterward that he'd never even troubled to ask me
what I could do.
Then the little young man that had been setting loose in his chair, sat
up loose, and spoke loose, too.
"I say," he said, "if she's a friend of Ember's, I might give her a card
to the factory."
"I shouldn't trouble if I were you, Arthur," says the big gray man,
sharp; which I didn't think was very nice of him.
But the little young man, tipping his cigar so's the smoke would keep
out of his eyes, and squinting back from it, took out a card and
scrawled on it and tossed it across the table toward me.
"You might try that," he says. And shook himself, loose again, and
strolled out the door. He walked loose, too.
I thanked him and put the card away, and went down in the elevator. It
was the same elevator, it turned out, that the little young man had
taken, but of course he didn't notice me. When I got down I asked the
man at the door how to get to the address of the factory that was
written on the card. He said it was about two miles, and told me with
his thumb which way. While I was trying to make out which way he meant,
I stood for a minute in the street doorway. And there was the little
young man again.
"Do you know how to get to the factory?" he asked.
"Yes. On my two feet," I says back, and started.
"You don't mean to say you're going to walk all that way?" he says,
following me a step or two.
"No," I says, "I don't mean to say it, as I know of."
"Look here," he says, "my car is here at the side door. I'm on my way
over to the factory now. Can't I give you a lift?"
I thought for a minute. I was awful tired. If I walked all that way and
then home, I'd have to spend ten cents for lunch that would be enough
for Mis' Bingy and me both at night. The little young man was a friend
of Mr. Carney's, that was a friend of Mr. Ember's....
"We'll be there in ten minutes," he says.
"Much obliged," I says, and went with him.
He had a nice little shiny two-seated car that he engineered himself.
When we was headed down the avenue he says:
"My name is Arthur Carney. I'm Mr. Carney's nephew."
I remembered about the awful things I'd said to Mr. Ember, so I answered
just as nice as I knew how: "I'm Cosma Wakely."
"Do you live here in town?" he ask' me.
"No," I says. "I just come from Katytown last night. Yes, I do live here
now--I forgot."
"Really," he says.
The car went so quick and smooth and even I could have sung because I
was in it. I'd never been in an automobile before.
"Oh," I says, "ain't this just grand?"
He looked over at me--he had a real white face and gold glasses and not
much of any hair showed. His clothes and his gloves was like new, and
some white cuffs peeked out.
"I think so," he says. "I'm glad you do."
"I meant the car," I says; and then I was afraid I'd made another
mistake, like I had with Mr. Ember, and that the car was what the little
young man had meant, too.
But he was looking at me and laughing.
"You're awfully sure what you mean, aren't you?" he says. "Are you
always that sure?"
I kept thinking that he was Mr. Carney's nephew, and that Mr. Carney was
Mr. Ember's friend. I wanted to answer him like I knew Mr. Ember would
like. I'd answered him saucy when he first spoke to me, but that was
part because I was embarrassed. So I didn't say anything at all. I
didn't care whether he thought I was a country girl and a stick or not.
I wanted to act nice.
"What made you run away from me yesterday?" he says.
"Yesterday?" I ask' him.
"At Gordon's studio," he says. "You don't mean to say you've forgotten
that I spoke to you when you stood in the doorway? And you ran away."
I ask' him, before I meant to, "Was Mr. Ember there?"
"Ember? No," he says; "he's never here. He works off in God-forsaken
spots. How are you going to like the city?"
I looked down the shiny crowded street. All to once I saw it different.
Before that I'd been thinking he might be in every crowd.
"It's awful lonesome here," I says.
The policeman at the corner held up his hand, and we had to sit still
and wait. The little young man leaned on the wheel.
"I hope you'll let me keep you from getting too lonesome," he says.
I turned round on him. In another minute I'd have given him the thing I
always tried to say back, smart and quick. "When I'm that lonesome, I'll
go traveling back home again," was what come in my head. Instead of
that, all at once I wondered what the woman in the pinkish dress and hat
in the studio would have said. And I said what she did say:
"I beg your pardon?"
He laughed. "All right," he said, and started the car. "I do go pretty
fast. But, by jove, you know, you bowl a fellow over."
I didn't say anything. I was thinking. Here was a man that had been with
all those people yesterday, the people that were the way I wanted to be.
He had always been with them. He had money, I thought--his clothes and
his cuffs, and then the car, looked as if he had. Probably he knew the
same things, almost, that Mr. Ember knew. He ought to be able to help
me.
"Mr. Carney," I says, "have you been to see Europe, and Asia--and
volcanoes?"
"Have I _what_?" says he.
"Oh," I says, "traveled. Well, I guess you _have_ seen all the things
and places there are to see, haven't you?"
"I've done a turn or two," he says. "Why? Are you interested in travel?"
"Oh, yes," I says; "but--of course--"
"Do you want to travel?" he says, turning to look at me.
"Why," I says; "but I mean--"
He stopped the car for the policeman at the next corner.
"Because," he says, leaning on the wheel again, "if you want to travel,
you shall travel."
It was almost what Mr. Ember had said. I was so thankful that now I knew
enough to answer nice, and not the awful way I had done to Mr. Ember.
"I hope so," I says. "I do want to."
I thought he was waiting for me to look round at him; but there was a
little dog in the automobile next to us, and I was watching that.
"When?" he says. "When?"
I says, "The gentleman blew his whistle."
He laughed, and started the car, and I went on with what I'd been
wanting to say.
"I was thinking," I says, "you've probably seen a whole lots of folks,
like I mean about. Well, I wanted to ask you: How do folks get
different? I mean, when they've started in being like me?"
"What do you mean, child?" he says.
"Get different," I says. "Get like those women there yesterday."
"There wasn't a woman in the room yesterday who could hold a candle to
you, and you know it," he says. "Ever since yesterday I've been cursing
myself that I didn't follow you. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw
you come into that office this morning. Why in the world would you want
to be different?"
I wanted to say, "Because I want something more than that in mine!" But
I didn't. I spoke just regular.
"No," I says, "I mean true. I mean, learn things. Not school things, but
how to do. How do you start out? I mean, if it's me?"
He kept looking at me, in between guiding his car.
"So that's it!" he says. "And you want me to tell you?"
"Yes!" I says. "More than anything else." He turned his car into a side
street, and run it slow. We was almost to the factory, I judged. I could
see smoke and big walls.
"You can have whatever schooling or training there is in this town that
you want--or anywhere else," he says to me, "if you just say the word."
It was just the way Mr. Ember had spoken, and Mr. Ember had meant that I
mustn't think there was nothing else for me only just what I'd got, if
I was willing to work for something more. So I see the little young man
must think as he did.
"It's nice to think so," I says.
"Do you mean it?" says he.
"Why, of course," I says. "Is this the factory?"
"You insist on trying for a job?" he says.
"Why, yes," I says. "Don't you think I can get one?"
"Sure you can get one," he says, "if I say the word."
I wondered how he done what he done. It wasn't five minutes that I
waited in the stuffy dirty room by the gate into the factory yard,
before a man come and told me to go up to the next floor.
When I crossed the yard the little young man come out of a door and he
says to me:
"Good-by, and good luck to you." And he adds low, "I'll be waiting for
you at six o'clock at the door we came in."
"Oh," I says, "don't you do that, Mr. Carney! Mr. Ember wouldn't want
me to trouble the other Mr. Carney or you either, not that much."
He scowled. "This isn't exactly on his account, you know."
And when he went off he didn't take off his hat to me, like Mr. Ember
had done, and like I thought city men always done.
I kept thinking all that over while they started me in to work, punching
holes in a card. I thought about it so hard that when night came I asked
the forewoman if I could walk to the car with her. I thought I could
take the street-car, now I had a job. She was a big red woman. "That
don't work with me, you'll find," she says, and went past me. I guess
she didn't understand what I said. So I went out with some of the other
girls, and it just happened that I got out another door than the one I
went in, and on to the street-car.
I bought a can of peas and four rolls and five cents butter, to
celebrate.
"Mis' Bingy," I says, when I went in, "scratch a match, and start the
cook stove up there on the wall! I've got a job for three dollars a
week, from eight till six. Didn't I tell you everything'd be easy?"