A NEW WORLD
The two girls stood on the sidewalk and let the tide of busy humanity flow
by unnoticed. Both were healthy types of youth--one from the open ranges
of the Great West, the other from a land far, far to the East.
Helen Morrell was brown, smiling, hopeful-looking; but she certainly was
not "up to date" in dress and appearance. The black-eyed and black-haired
Russian girl was just as well developed for her age and as rugged as she
could be; but in her cheap way her frock was the "very latest thing," her
hair was dressed wonderfully, and the air of "city smartness" about her
made the difference between her and Helen even more marked.
"I never s'posed you'd come down here," said Sadie again.
"You asked was I turned out of my uncle's house," responded Helen,
seriously. "Well, it does about amount to that."
"Oh, no! Never!" cried the other girl.
"Let me tell you," said Helen, whose heart was so full that she longed for
a confidant. Besides, Sadie Goronsky would never know the Starkweather
family and their friends, and she felt free to speak fully. So, without
much reserve, she related her experiences in her uncle's house.
"Now, ain't they the mean things!" ejaculated Sadie, referring to the
cousins. "And I suppose they're awful rich?"
"I presume so. The house is very large," declared Helen.
"And they've got loads and loads of dresses, too?" demanded the working
girl.
"Oh, yes. They are very fashionably dressed," Helen told her. "But see! I
am going to have a new dress myself. Uncle Starkweather gave me ten
dollars."
"Chee!" ejaculated Sadie. "Wouldn't it give him a cramp in his pocket-book
to part with so much mazouma?"
"Mazouma?"
"That's Hebrew for money," laughed Sadie. "But you _do_ need a dress.
Where did you get that thing you've got on?"
"Out home," replied Helen. "I see it isn't very fashionable."
"Say! we got through sellin' them things to greenies two years back,"
declared Sadie.
"You haven't been at work all that time; have you?" gasped the girl from
the ranch.
"Sure. I got my working papers four years ago. You see, I looked a lot
older than I really was, and comin' across from the old country all us
children changed our ages, so't we could go right to work when we come
here without having to spend all day in school. We had an uncle what come
over first, and he told us what to do."
Helen listened to this with some wonder. She felt perfectly safe with
Sadie, and would have trusted her, if it were necessary, with the money
she had hidden away in her closet at Uncle Starkweather's; yet the other
girl looked upon the laws of the land to which she had come for freedom as
merely harsh rules to be broken at one's convenience.
"Of course," said Sadie, "I didn't work on the sidewalk here at first. I
worked back in Old Yawcob's shop--making changes in the garments for fussy
customers. I was always quick with my needle.
"Then I helped the salesladies. But business was slack, and people went
right by our door, and I jumped out one day and started to pull 'em in.
And I was better at it----
"Good-day, ma'am! Will you look at a beautiful skirt--just the very latest
style--we've only got a few of them for samples?" She broke off and left
Helen to stand wondering while Sadie chaffered with another woman, who had
hesitated a trifle as she passed the shop.
"Oh, no, ma'am! You was no greenie. I could tell that at once. That's why
I spoke English to you yet," Sadie said, flattering the prospective buyer,
and smiling at her pleasantly. "If you will just step in and see these
skirts--or a two-piece suit if you will?"
Helen observed her new friend with amazement. Although she knew Sadie
could be no older than herself, she used the tact of long business
experience in handling the woman. And she got her into the store, too!
"I wash my hands of 'em when they get inside," she said, laughing, and
coming back to Helen. "If Old Yawcob and his wife and his salesladies
can't hold 'em, it isn't _my_ fault, you understand. I'm about the
youngest puller-in there is along Madison Street--although that little
hunchback in front of the millinery shop yonder _looks_ younger."
"But you don't try to pull _me_ in," said Helen, laughing. "And I've got
ten whole dollars to spend."
"That's right. But then, you see, you're my friend, Miss," said Sadie. "I
want to be sure you get your money's worth. So I'm going with you when you
buy your dress--that is, if you'll let me."
"Let you? Why, I'd dearly love to have you advise me," declared the
Western girl. "And don't--_don't_--call me 'Miss.' I'm Helen Morrell, I
tell you."
"All right. If you say so. But, you know, you _are_ from Madison Avenyer
just the same."
"No. I'm from a great big ranch out West."
"That's like a farm--yes? I gotter cousin that works on a farm over on
Long Island. It's a big farm--it's eighty acres. Is that farm you come
from as big as that?"
Helen nodded and did not smile at the girl's ignorance. "Very much bigger
than eighty acres," she said. "You see, it has to be, for we raise cattle
instead of vegetables."
"Well, I guess I don't know much about it," admitted Sadie, frankly. "All
I know is this city and mostly this part of it down here on the East Side.
We all have to work so hard, you know. But we're getting along better than
we did at first, for more of us children can work.
"And now I want you should go home with me for dinner, Helen--yes! It is
my dinner hour quick now; and then we will have time to pick you out a
bargain for a dress. Sure! You'll come?"
"If I won't be imposing on you?" said Helen, slowly.
"Huh! That's all right. We'll have enough to eat _this_ noon. And it ain't
so Jewish, either, for father don't come home till night. Father's awful
religious; but I tell mommer she must be up-to-date and have some 'Merican
style about her. I got her to leave off her wig yet. Catch _me_ wearin' a
wig when I'm married just to make me look ugly. Not!"
All this rather puzzled Helen; but she was too polite to ask questions.
She knew vaguely that Jewish people followed peculiar rabbinical laws and
customs; but what they were she had no idea. However, she liked Sadie, and
it mattered nothing to Helen what the East Side girl's faith or bringing
up had been. Sadie was kind, and friendly, and was really the only person
in all this big city in whom the ranch girl could place the smallest
confidence.
Sadie ran into the store for a moment and soon a big woman with an
unctuous smile, a ruffled white apron about as big as a postage stamp, and
her gray hair dressed as remarkably as Sadie's own, came out upon the
sidewalk to take the young girl's place.
"Can't I sell you somedings, lady?" she said to the waiting Helen.
"Now, don't you go and run _my_ customer in, Ma Finkelstein!" cried Sadie,
running out and hugging the big woman. "Helen is my friend and she's going
home to eat mit me."
"_Ach!_ you are already a United Stater yet," declared the big woman,
laughing. "Undt the friends you have it from Number Five Av'noo--yes?"
"You guessed it pretty near right," cried Sadie. "Helen lives on Madison
Avenyer--and it ain't Madison Avenyer _uptown_, neither!"
She slipped her hand in Helen's and bore her off to the tenement house in
which Helen had had her first adventure in the great city.
"Come on up," said Sadie, hospitably. "You look tired, and I bet you
walked clear down here?"
"Yes, I did," admitted Helen.
"Some o' mommer's soup mit lentils will rest you, I bet. It ain't far
yet--only two flights."
Helen followed her cheerfully. But she wondered if she was doing just
right in letting this friendly girl believe that she was just as poor as
the Starkweathers thought she was. Yet, on the other hand, wouldn't Sadie
Goronsky have felt embarrassed and have been afraid to be her friend, if
she knew that Helen Morrell was a very, very wealthy girl and had at her
command what would seem to the Russian girl "untold wealth"?
"I'll pay her for this," thought Helen, with the first feeling of real
happiness she had experienced since leaving the ranch. "She shall never be
sorry that she was kind to me."
So she followed Sadie into the humble home of the latter on the third
floor of the tenement with a smiling face and real warmth at her heart. In
Yiddish the downtown girl explained rapidly her acquaintance with "the
Gentile." But, as she had told Helen, Sadie's mother had begun to break
away from some of the traditions of her people. She was fast becoming "a
United Stater," too.
She was a handsome, beaming woman, and she was as generous-hearted as
Sadie herself. The rooms were a little steamy, for Mrs. Goronsky had been
doing the family wash that morning. But the table was set neatly and the
food that came on was well prepared and--to Helen--much more acceptable
than the dainties she had been having at Uncle Starkweather's.
The younger children, who appeared for the meal, were right from the
street where they had been playing, or from work in neighboring factories,
and were more than a little grimy. But they were not clamorous and they
ate with due regard to "manners."
"Ve haf nine, Mees," said Mrs. Goronsky, proudly. "Undt they all are
healt'y--_ach! so_ healt'y. It takes mooch to feed them yet."
"Don't tell about it, Mommer" cried Sadie. "It aint stylish to have big
fam'lies no more. Don't I tell you?"
"What about that Preesident we hadt--that Teddy Sullivan--what said big
fam'lies was a good d'ing? Aindt that enough? Sure, Sarah, a _Preesident_
iss stylish."
"Oh, Mommer!" screamed Sadie. "You gotcher politics mixed. 'Sullivan' is
the district leader wot gifs popper a job; but 'Teddy' was the President
yet. You ain't never goin' to be real American."
But her mother only laughed. Indeed, the light-heartedness of these poor
people was a revelation to Helen. She had supposed vaguely that very poor
people must be all the time serious, if not actually in tears.
"Now, Helen, we'll rush right back to the shop and I'll make Old Yawcob
sell you a bargain. She's goin' to get her new dress, Mommer. Ain't that
fine?"
"Sure it iss," declared the good woman. "Undt you get her a bargain,
Sarah."
"_Don't_ call me 'Sarah,' Mommer!" cried the daughter. "It ain't stylish,
I tell you. Call me 'Sadie.'"
Her mother kissed her on both plump cheeks. "What matters it, my little
lamb?" she said, in their own tongue. "Mother love makes _any_ name
sweet."
Helen did not, of course, understand these words; but the caress, the look
on their faces, and the way Sadie returned her mother's kiss made a great
lump come into the orphan girl's throat. She could hardly find her way in
the dim hall to the stairway, she was so blinded by tears.