Part 74 (1/2)

”But you look as if you could do more and better work in an hour than that young bob-squirt could in a month,” said the man at his side.

”Very likely,” replied Carroll, indifferently.

”You don't seem to care much about it,” the other man said. The two had gone out of the building, and were walking slowly down the street.

”If they want young men, they do, I suppose,” Carroll said.

”Been trying long?”

”Quite a time.”

”Well, the employers are a set of G. D. fools!” said the other man.

An oath sounded horribly incongruous coming from his long, thin, benevolent mouth.

”I don't see what you are going to do about it if they are,” Carroll replied, still with that odd patience. It seemed to him as if he was getting a sort of fellow-feeling and intense personal knowledge of his fellow-beings, which united him to them with ties stronger than those of love. He felt as if he more than loved this rebellious wretch beside him, as if he were one with him, only possessed of that patience which gave him a certain power to aid him. ”I suppose men have the right to employ whom they choose,” said Carroll. ”If they prefer young men who don't know how to do the work, to old men who do, I suppose they have a right to engage them. And they may have some show of reason for it. I don't see what can be done, anyway.”

”I'll tell you what has got to be done, sir, and how we can help ourselves,” returned the other, with a ranting voice which made people turn and stare at him. ”I'll tell you. We've got to form a union. There are unions for everything else. We have got to have a union of older men qualified to work, who are shouldered out of it by boys. Once that is done, we are all right. To-day in this country a man can't hire whom he pleases in most things. The unions have put it out of his power. The people have risen. We belong to a part of the people who haven't risen. Now we must rise. Let us form a union, I say. If they engage young men before us, there are ways of making them smart for it, the employers as well as the employes. I tell you that has got to be done.”

Suddenly the men heard a laugh behind them. It was a woman's laugh, shrill and not altogether pleasant--not the laugh of a young woman, but the woman who came up with and immediately began to speak looked quite young. She was undeniably pretty. Her blond pompadour drooped coquettishly over one eye, her cheeks were pink, her face smooth, her figure was really superb, and she was very well dressed, in a tailor-made gown, smart furs, and a hat evidently of the English-tailor make.

”Excuse me,” she said, with perfect a.s.surance, and yet with nothing of offensive boldness, rather with an air of _camaraderie_, ”but I heard you talking, you two, and I thought I would give you a few points. I don't know whether you know it or not, but I have recently secured the position of cas.h.i.+er there, in Adkins & Somers's.” She motioned with one nicely gloved hand back towards the place they had just left. ”I got it in preference to about a dozen young girls, too,” she said, with triumph, ”but I shouldn't have if--” She hesitated a minute. The color on her cheeks deepened under the floating veil, and there was, in consequence, a curious effect of two shades of rose on her cheeks. ”See here,” she said, walking along with them, ”I don't know you two men from Adam, and I needn't take the trouble, and if you don't like it you can lump it, but I'm going to say something. I know I look young. I ain't fis.h.i.+ng for a compliment. I know it. I've got a looking-gla.s.s in a good light, and I've got my eyes in my head, and, what's more, I'm s.p.u.n.ky enough to own it to myself if I don't look young; but I ain't young. I ain't going to say how old I am, but I will say this much, I ain't young.

I've been married twice and I've had three children. My first husband died, the second went off and left me. I've got a daughter fourteen years old I'm keeping in school. She ain't going into a department store, if I work my fingers to the bone.” She said the last with a fierce air that made her for a second really look younger. ”Well,”

she went on. ”I'll tell you, too. I had a good place for a number of years, but the man died in September, and the man that took the business put his sister in my place. Then I was out of a job. I hadn't saved a cent, and I didn't know what I was going to do.

Mildred--that's my daughter--is big of her age and good-looking, and she wanted to leave school and go to work, but I wouldn't let her.

Well, I studied up all the advertis.e.m.e.nts and I tried, and I couldn't do a thing. Then I set my wits to work. I ain't one to give up in a hurry; I never was. As I said before, I didn't have much money, but I hire our little flat of a woman, and she's a good sort, and she's willing to wait, and a month ago I took every cent I could raise and I went through a course of treatment with a beauty-doctor. I had my hair (it was turned some) dyed, and I was ma.s.saged until I felt like a currant-bun, but I always had a good skin, and there was something to work on, and I took my figure in hand; that wasn't very bad, anyway, but I got new corsets, awful expensive ones, and had a tailor suit made. I had to raise some money on a little jewelry I had, but I made up my mind it was neck or nothing, and, sir, a month ago I got that place in Adkins & Somers's at a thousand a year. They are good men, too. You needn't think there's anything wrong.” She looked at them with an expression as if she was ready to spring at the slightest intimation of distrust on their part. ”It is only just that people think they want young help and they are going to have it. I've got the place and I'm in clover, and it's worth something looking so much better, though it don't make much difference to me. All I care about nowadays is my daughter.”

The two men looked at the woman, Carroll with a courteous sympathy, and the interest of an observer of human nature. She was of a p.r.o.nounced American type, coa.r.s.e, vulgar, strident-voiced, smart, with a shrewdly working brain and of an unimpeachable heart. She was generosity and honesty itself, as she looked at the two men in a similar strait to the one from which she had extricated herself.

The other man, who had a bitter, possibly a dangerous strain developed by his misfortunes, laughed sardonically. ”How long do you think you can keep it up?” said he. ”Hm?” Had he been less worn and weary, and apparently even starved, his laugh and question would have evoked a sharper response. As it was, the woman replied with the utmost good-nature.

”Any old time,” said she. ”Lord! I ain't setting up for a kid. I ain't fool enough to put on short skirts and pigtails, but I am setting up for a young lady, and I can keep it up, anyhow. Lord! I ain't so very old, anyhow. If I didn't look the way I do now, I couldn't get a position, because they'd put me down for a back-number; but I had something left for that beauty-doctor to work on.” Then she gazed critically at the two men. ”It wouldn't take much to make you into a regular dude,” said she to Carroll. ”You are dressed to beat the band as it is. Say!” She gave him a confidential wink.

”Well?” said Carroll.

”You are dressed most too well. It's all very well to look stylish, to look as if you had been earning twenty-five hundred a year, but, Lord! you look as if you had been getting ten! The bosses might be a little afraid of you. They might say they didn't see how a man could have dressed like you do, unless he had helped himself to some of the firm's cash. See? I don't mean any offence. You look to me like a real gentleman.”

”Thank you,” replied Carroll.

”If I was you I'd put on a pair of pants not quite so nicely creased, and I'd sell that overcoat and get a good-style ready-made one. Your chances would be a heap better--honest.”

”Thank you,” said Carroll, again. He was conscious of amus.e.m.e.nt and a curious sense of a mental tonic from this loud-voiced, eagerly helpful female.

”I'm right, you bet,” said she. ”But otherwise it wouldn't take much.

You go and have a little something put on your hair, and have your face ma.s.saged a little, and if I was you I'd buy a red tie. You can get a dandy red tie at Steele & Esterbrook's for a quarter. That one you have on makes you look kinder pale. Then a red tie is younger.

Say, I'll tell you, if you would only have your mustache trimmed, and wax the ends, it would make no end of difference.”

”What are you going to do when you are asked how old you are? Lie?”

inquired the other man, in his bitter, sardonic voice.