Part 65 (1/2)

Thank you for your offer just the same.”

”Peculiarly offensive young person!” said Mrs. Thaddler to her husband.

”Looks to me like one of these literary imposters. Mrs. p.o.r.ne will probably appear in the magazines before long.”

Mr. Thaddler instantly conceived a liking for the young person, ”sight unseen.”

Diantha acquired quite a list of offers; places open to her as soon as she was free; at prices from her present seven dollars up to the proposed doubling.

”Fourteen dollars a week and found!--that's not so bad,” she meditated.

”That would mean over $650 clear in a year! It's a wonder to me girls don't try it long enough to get a start at something else. With even two or three hundred ahead--and an outfit--it would be easier to make good in a store or any other way. Well--I have other fish to fry!”

So she pursued her way; and, with Mrs. p.o.r.ne's permission--held a sort of girl's club in her spotless kitchen one evening a week during the last three months of her engagement. It was a ”Study and Amus.e.m.e.nt Club.” She gave them short and interesting lessons in arithmetic, in simple dressmaking, in easy and thorough methods of housework. She gave them lists of books, referred them to articles in magazines, insidiously taught them to use the Public Library.

They played pleasant games in the second hour, and grew well acquainted.

To the eye or ear of any casual visitor it was the simplest and most natural affair, calculated to ”elevate labor” and to make home happy.

Diantha studied and observed. They brought her their poor confidences, painfully similar. Always poverty--or they would not be there. Always ignorance, or they would not stay there. Then either incompetence in the work, or inability to hold their little earnings--or both; and further the Tale of the Other Side--the exactions and restrictions of the untrained mistresses they served; cases of withheld wages; cases of endless requirements; cases of most arbitrary interference with their receiving friends and ”followers,” or going out; and cases, common enough to be horrible, of insult they could only escape by leaving.

”It's no wages, of course--and no recommendation, when you leave like that--but what else can a girl do, if she's honest?”

So Diantha learned, made friends and laid broad foundations.

The excellence of her c.o.c.king was known to many, thanks to the weekly ”entertainments.” No one refused. No one regretted acceptance. Never had Mrs. p.o.r.ne enjoyed such a sense of social importance.

All the people she ever knew called on her afresh, and people she never knew called on her even more freshly. Not that she was directly responsible for it. She had not triumphed cruelly over her less happy friends; nor had she cried aloud on the street corners concerning her good fortune. It was not her fault, nor, in truth anyone's. But in a community where the ”servant question” is even more vexed than in the country at large, where the local product is quite unequal to the demand, and where distance makes importation an expensive matter, the fact of one woman's having, as it appeared, settled this vexed question, was enough to give her prominence.

Mrs. Ellen A. Danks.h.i.+re, President of the Orchardina Home and Culture Club, took up the matter seriously.

”Now Mrs. p.o.r.ne,” said she, settling herself vigorously into a comfortable chair, ”I just want to talk the matter over with you, with a view to the club. We do not know how long this will last--”

”Don't speak of it!” said Mrs. p.o.r.ne.

”--and it behooves us to study the facts while we have them.”

”So much is involved!” said little Mrs. Ree, the Corresponding Secretary, lifting her pale earnest face with the perplexed fine lines in it. ”We are all so truly convinced of the sacredness of the home duties!”

”Well, what do you want me to do?” asked their hostess.

”We must have that remarkable young woman address our club!” Mrs.

Danks.h.i.+re announced. ”It is one case in a thousand, and must be studied!”

”So n.o.ble of her!” said Mrs. Ree. ”You say she was really a school-teacher? Mrs. Thaddler has put it about that she is one of these dreadful writing persons--in disguise!”

”O no,” said Mrs. p.o.r.ne. ”She is perfectly straightforward about it, and had the best of recommendations. She was a teacher, but it didn't agree with her health, I believe.”

”Perhaps there is a story to it!” Mrs. Ree advanced; but Mrs. Danks.h.i.+re disagreed with her flatly.

”The young woman has a theory, I believe, and she is working it out. I respect her for it. Now what we want to ask you, Mrs. p.o.r.ne, is this: do you think it would make any trouble for you--in the household relations, you know--if we ask her to read a paper to the Club? Of course we do not wish to interfere, but it is a remarkable opportunity--very. You know the fine work Miss Lucy Salmon has done on this subject; and Miss Frances Kellor. You know how little data we have, and how great, how serious, a question it is daily becoming! Now here is a young woman of brains and culture who has apparently grappled with the question; her example and influence must not be lost! We must hear from her. The public must know of this.”

”Such an enn.o.bling example!” murmured Mrs. Ree. ”It might lead numbers of other school-teachers to see the higher side of the home duties!”