sis}+ 
 
 AiStRE 
 
 eine Bet 
 
 Oe ote) Sb dea 
 
 . 
 tat 
 
 Gul 
 
 : ray eh Lata 
 mgt pete? S z rf if Sees 5 
 
 EA Ci THT : : Tee : paravert jearetrs 
 
 Toner 
 
 at 
 
 He 
 
 aE i} 
 t. 
 
 eke Exper 
 
 Wee hee Res eee 
 fF 2s 
 
 yea TOR FT 
 Ae ica Ge oe. 
 
 RETR AITTE 
 
 pel Behe 2 steer ace 
 TH TTY Beat ites 
 
 getesiit 
 DEt wees b51 38 
 corey 
 
 
 

 

 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2022 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/otherpeoplesdaugO0wemb 
 
OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 

 
) 
 
 
 
 
 
 BSS) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 OTHER PEOPLE’S 
 
 ‘) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 S DAUGHTERS 
 
 e 
 
 ©] ELEanor RowLaAND WeEMBRIDGE, Pu.D. |&) 
 
 . Referee in the Juvenile Court A 
 
 ®S Cleveland, Ohio Spy) 
 
 (iS) Author of ‘The Right to Believe’ and ‘The Significance of Art’ & 
 
 8 © 
 
 S © 
 ©) 
 S 
 6) 
 
 
 
 
 
 Boston and New York 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 The Riverside Press Cambridge 
 
 GOEeeoges 
 
 eect 
 
 GS 
 GOBASoeegas 
 
 GSSSBSOSGGGESGESS 
 
 
 
 ATACACIa 
 
 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1923, 1924, AND 1925, BY THE SURVEY ASSOCIATES, INC. 
 COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC. 
 COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 The Riverside Press 
 CAMBRIDGE - MASSACHUSETTS 
 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. 
 
TO 
 ELIZABETH McLELLAN ROWLAND 
 WHOSE DAUGHTER 
 
 IT IS MY GREAT PRIVILEGE TO BE 
 
ee \ Pip: ¥, 
 q a if Ny i) al 
 a ee eS pat 
 i yf ef yi 
 
 i ye ae ae a a 
 
 , 
 
 *" Say AAY 
 Aha rai Five ay t 
 Pi eae, vob! 
 
 io dat hive pe va 
 
 tn 
 ; 
 
 Rae Tate Twat 
 
 ca hit 
 
 _ er ont if Ess in 
 
 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE following sketches of girls, their sweethearts 
 and their families, all of whom have found living 
 in a complex world a somewhat difficult matter, 
 are not offered merely as records of fact, nor as 
 bits of life disguised as fiction, although they are 
 both of these. They are preéminently an experi- 
 mental attempt on the part of one interested, not 
 only in the human drama, but in the science of 
 psychology, to study, by a kind of transplanted 
 laboratory method, emotional phenomena which 
 by the nature of the case can never be caught, 
 held, and analyzed in the cool atmosphere of the 
 laboratory. To the chemist and the physicist 
 with their proud boast of measurable elements, 
 the science of psychology must ever appear, and in 
 reality is, inexact. The psychologist, interested 
 in events outside the laboratory as well as in, 
 is rather in the position of that other scientist 
 of later days, the geographer. Neither one can 
 capture or buy at wholesale his continents or his 
 tides, his loves or his hates, and measure them 
 under a quiet microscope. Each must rather, with 
 
Vili PREFACE 
 
 whatever pains, travel to his torrents, whether of 
 water or of wrath, and his frozen mountains, 
 whether of ice or of baffled instinct, and must 
 study them where they are. But however toil- 
 some the method, and incapable as are both ex- 
 plorers of telling what they find in the precise 
 terms of the exact sciences, neither one would 
 sacrifice the richness of his field, the wild tangles 
 of the outer or the inner world, for the greater 
 finesse of the physicist’s scales, or the test-tubes 
 of the chemist, which froth and change color at 
 his convenience over his quiet table. 
 
 The purpose of these stories is, therefore, in 
 ever so inadequate a way, to bring the complex 
 inner life of a few inarticulate people before the 
 student of human behavior, not merely as the 
 fiction writer who very rightly has no object other 
 than his art, nor wholly as a dispassionate re- 
 corder of events whose report is studiously purged 
 of the emotion of which he writes. Both may be 
 more valuable things to do, but they have been 
 done many times, and I have not tried them here. 
 These sketches are rather the experimental at- 
 tempts of a would-be human geographer to dis- 
 play and to impress upon his audience by moving- 
 pictures, rather than by statistics, the deserts, the 
 warped vegetation, and the volcanoes which he 
 
PREFACE 1X 
 
 has witnessed. The psychological insets corre- 
 spond to the geographer’s altitudes, his sound- 
 ings, and his barometric charts. But in the main 
 he leaves his pictures wholly as fact, and partly 
 if possible of beauty, to tell their own story. And 
 so do I. 
 
 ELEANOR ROWLAND WEMBRIDGE 
 
 CLEVELAND, OHIO 
 January 15, 1926 
 
yoy 
 “, 
 aka a %, a iar 
 
 Py est a4 
 AY be 
 sa Ne a Part ita i 
 
 wil ante hy ae 
 en i He 
 i q 
 
 4 
 
 tk ieee hia 
 
 aaAy’ 
 
 | 4g ut 
 
 an Wilts ; 
 
 Bis (A 
 7D P if. 
 “ ye 
 ¢ 
 
 va 
 
 
 
XIII. 
 SIV. 
 . THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING (Morgs) 
 XVI. 
 XVII. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 . THE BOOKKEEPER (BEHAVIOR PATTERNS) 
 . THE ALIAS (DAYDREAMS) 
 . THE New House (WISHES) 
 
 . BULLIEVE ME! (EXPRESSION IN WoRDS 
 
 AND PLAY) 
 
 . ESTELLE AND SAM (ADAPTATION) 
 . GERTRUDE AND GUS (EXHIBITIONISM) 
 . IRENE AND NICHOLAS (COMPENSATION) 
 
 . L.Q. .73 (STANDARD MENTAL EXAMINA- 
 
 TIONS) 
 
 . Dutt (Morons) 
 . THE Two MarGARETSs (IMITATION) 
 
 . PETTING AND THE Campus (INSTINCTS — 
 
 SEX) 
 
 . GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER (INSTINCTS — PA- 
 
 RENTAL LOVE) 
 SILK STOCKINGS (INSTINCTS — EGoTISM) 
 THE First oF May (INstTINcts — HERD) 
 
 SEVEN P.M. (FATIGUE) 
 Just LIKE STEVE (EDUCATION) 
 
 185 
 
 205 
 227 
 245 
 269 
 291 
 399 
 
ve Maha 
 
 ay he's 
 ee ka 
 
 * 
 cone 
 aS 
 {1 uclhg AYA 
 Wale 
 
 
 
 i eee "i ji 
 wy oe er ed 
 
OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 I 
 THE BOOKKEEPER 
 
THE BOOKKEEPER 
 
 ‘Behavior pattern’ is a term often applied by 
 psychologists to the system of habits and ways of 
 thinking which make up the life of any individual 
 or group. These habits become so interrelated 
 with each other that when some of them are neces- 
 sarily changed because of a complete change of 
 environment, the rest of them tend to be shaken 
 up in sympathy. The individual at such a time is 
 often temporarily off his guard, and ways of act- 
 ing which would be impossible to fit into the old 
 behavior pattern, in the old environment, be- 
 come possible in the new. 
 
 All young people are in particular need of su- 
 pervision, whenever their life habits shift from 
 old grooves into new. 
 
OTHER PEOPLE’S 
 DAUGHTERS 
 
 I 
 THE BOOKKEEPER 
 
 NorMA came from East Eden where she graduated 
 from high school in a white organdie dress, and 
 sang a duet with the minister’s son at the class 
 reception. She had been a careful, conscientious 
 student, and for two years since her graduation 
 she had been a clerk and bookkeeper in her uncle’s 
 hardware store. But Norma was not satisfied. 
 She was an ambitious girl, and dreamed long 
 dreams, chief of which was the dream of going to 
 the city to make her way in some larger business 
 enterprise than the selling of shears to country 
 housewives, and hoes and lawn-mowers to their 
 husbands. 
 
 So Norma came to the city, and, as if by Fate’s 
 appointment, she found herself, at her daily 
 lunch-counter, seated next to Luman, a six-foot 
 mining man from Denver. Luman was handsome 
 and talkative. He easily scraped acquaintance 
 with the pleasant-looking girl whom he saw every 
 
4 OTHER PEOPEE'S DAUGHTERS & 
 
 noon, and Norma listened to his stories with fas- 
 cination. 
 
 Although a small-town girl reared to house- 
 wifely interests, she was, by nature, a statistician. 
 She loved figures and the adding and subtracting 
 of them. The larger the better. She had been 
 the only girl in high school who was not afraid of 
 partial payments and percentage, and she at- 
 tacked a page of figures, and even the stock 
 quotations in the morning paper, like a dish of 
 sweet morsels. So to have a handsome stranger 
 talk finance to her all through the lunch hour, and 
 to have these figures stand for gold mines instead 
 of kegs of nails, was her idea of glory and romance. 
 The whole affair entertained Luman enormously. 
 He had been accustomed to women more than 
 ready to share the contents of his gold mines. 
 But this absorbed little bookkeeper, with her 
 thirst for figures, regardless of whose bankbook 
 they adorned, was a new type. He would put up 
 various financial schemes to her, and roar with 
 laughter when she put her finger on their weak- 
 nesses. ‘You sure would make a good pardner for 
 a mining man,’ he chuckled. ‘I’d like to see your 
 face if some of the boys tried to sell you a wildcat 
 proposition.’ 
 
 All of this put Norma into a glow of happiness. 
 
THE BPOOKKEEPER 5 
 
 Within a week she had decided that she had 
 always meant to marry a Westerner, and that 
 probably six bridesmaids would be more effective 
 than four. Luman had a car, and he got into the 
 way of picking up Norma after office hours and 
 taking her off for dinner and a drive through the 
 parksand along the river-front. He even persuaded 
 her to go to the public amusement grounds with 
 him, although this was a radical proceeding for 
 Norma, and she clung to him with a fearful joy on 
 her first ‘witching waves’ and ‘shoot the chutes.’ 
 By July Luman asked Norma to marry him, and 
 she had agreed with the greatest enthusiasm. She 
 was more than ready to marry him; in fact, it had 
 not crossed her mind that she would do anything 
 else. She wanted to marry him at once in the East 
 Eden Church, but, since he did not seem to relish 
 that idea, she would have married him any day, 
 any time, anywhere. That was how she felt about 
 it. She expected to drive up to a minister’s with- 
 out delay, and for the life of her she could not see 
 what they were waiting for. Being naturally 
 systematic, as well as much in love, she fretted a 
 good deal over the delay. But Luman hesitated, 
 and finally announced that he must go to Denver. 
 Business was not what it should be. He would go 
 first, and then would send for her. When she 
 
6 OTHER PEOPLES JDAG GH bio 
 
 heard of this, she hinted and then begged outright 
 to go with him, but he said that it was impossible. 
 Then with no more ado, he simply left, with no 
 forwarding address. 
 
 For a few weeks Norma went to her office as 
 before. But it was a long hot walk, she was not 
 well, and so thoroughly distressed and miserable, 
 that she was almost frantic. All of this had not 
 escaped the sharp eyes of Mrs. Neilson, the small 
 blonde wife of a local coal-dealer, who had been 
 rooming temporarily at the same house with 
 Norma. Mrs. Neilson was a young woman who 
 said little, but who saw a good deal. Her stay at 
 the rooming-house had been chiefly devoted to 
 watching Norma and Luman in their love-making. 
 She had been fairly certain that all was not well 
 even before he left. Now there could be no mis- 
 taking that there was trouble. Her room was 
 adjacent to Norma’s and she heard her crying 
 every night much too long and much too desper- 
 ately to be merely lonesome for her lover. 
 
 One evening she listened to her as long as she 
 could bear it, and then she tapped on Norma’s 
 door. Getting no answer, she walked in, and sat 
 down on the bed beside the sobbing girl. ‘You 
 can do these things if you are small enough,’ she 
 explained to her husband. ‘If you are big, they 
 
THE BOOKKEEPER 7 
 
 throw you out. I’m too small to kick.’ So she sat 
 on the bed and put her hand on Norma’s shoulder. 
 ‘Say, kid,’ she remarked, ‘I know what’s wrong. 
 That guy has gone off and left you in trouble. 
 Hard luck, but there’s no use in crying so loud 
 you wake the whole house. Cheer up. You’re not 
 the first one. [ll get you a job with my man, and 
 see you through’ — and with no more ado (she 
 being twenty and Norma eighteen) she lay down 
 beside her, and they went to sleep. 
 
 Tim, the coal-dealer, was an indulgent husband, 
 his wife being a very recent acquisition, and he 
 agreed to take Norma into his office to settle his 
 books. ‘The Lord knows they need it,’ he said 
 with a large laugh. So Norma was established and 
 boarded with them next door. Mrs. Tim, whose 
 talents lay in quite other lines from those of bal- 
 ancing figures, had a silent but inordinate respect 
 for Norma’s powers. She often dropped in at the 
 office and watched Norma vibrating between her 
 ledgers and the safe, and knitting her brows over 
 the cash-box. ‘Gosh, kid!’ would be her brief 
 comment, and with a pat on the shoulder, she 
 would walk out again. Norma was not wholly 
 easy to deal with at this period. If any one recalls 
 how the young soldier patients used to look in the 
 hospital amputation wards, as they puffed their 
 
8 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 cigarettes and stared straight in front of them, 
 they will know how Norma looked. Every young 
 veteran with his crutch beside him was thinking, 
 ‘I, the best dancer in town, am going to be a crip- 
 ple, a legless man whom the girls will pity for ever 
 and ever.’ In the same way, as soon as Norma’s 
 books balanced, the light in her eyes died out, and 
 she sat in Mrs. Neilson’s parlor with the same 
 stare. Her thoughts ran like a windmill, ‘I, a 
 member of the church, am a bad girl. It’s hap- 
 pened to me. I, with a fatherless baby like the 
 poorhouse women.’ The name for this state of 
 mind and for the expression which it stamps upon 
 the face is—Shock. And shock does not make a 
 a person easy to deal with. Sometimes Mrs. 
 Neilson would cry — ‘Cut it, kid, you give me the 
 jumps,’ and would drag her to the movie. But 
 the plots were often so distressingly similar to 
 Norma’s own drama, that her friend was obliged 
 to add, ‘Let’s beat it, kid,’ and drag her home 
 again. 
 
 And when the baby was finally born and died 
 within a few days, Norma was still harder to deal 
 with. For she was sorry the baby died, but not 
 sorry enough, and sorry because she was not as 
 sorry as she ought to be, and altogether was so 
 torn between the feelings which she did and did 
 
THE BOOKKEEPER 9 
 
 not have, that Mrs. Neilson, whose theology 
 was of a most sketchy order, had occasion more 
 than once to murmur, ‘Gosh, you church mem- 
 bers!’ 
 
 In the meantime Mrs. Neilson had got Norma’s 
 old position back for her, since it paid much better 
 wages than Tim could afford. And with a cheerful 
 disregard of truth she had told such a circum- 
 stantial account of Norma’s appendicitis, that 
 the other girls in the office suspected nothing. 
 Norma was apparently just where she was before, 
 except that, as all the stenographers agreed, 
 ‘An appendix does pull down your looks.’ 
 
 Norma grimly declined to discuss her symp- 
 toms with the other appendix victims, but Mrs. 
 Neilson, so seldom talkative, could do a good job 
 when she set about it, and no lies were necessary 
 on Norma’s part. ‘No one could fool me with a 
 tale like that,’ mused Mrs. Neilson, ‘but I’ve 
 bluffed that darn office to a fare-ye-well.’ 
 
 Perhaps the most striking feature of the whole 
 situation was the unlimited confidence which 
 Norma and Mrs. Neilson placed in one another, 
 although each of them belonged to a type of which 
 the other fundamentally disapproved. Norma 
 had never supposed such heathen as Mrs. Neilson 
 existed outside of darkest Africa. In vain could 
 
10 OTHER’) PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 
 
 she extract from her any inkling as to her religious 
 convictions, or even as to her preferences. Mrs. 
 Tim asserted that she had never been in a church 
 except when her uncle got married. ‘But he was 
 married in a swell church all right,’ she boasted. 
 ‘But what kind,’ pleaded Norma, ‘Catholic or 
 Protestant?’ ‘Brick,’ said Mrs. Neilson; and 
 further than that, she either could not, or would 
 not go. On the other hand Mrs. Neilson would 
 say pleasantly to Norma, ‘You know, you prunes 
 from Hickville, I never could see you before; you 
 just weren’t on my map.’ Yet, despite the fact 
 that her cynical distrust of most women amounted 
 almost to a mania, she never doubted one least 
 detail of Norma’s story. When Tim, in his large 
 masculine way, observed that maybe Norma 
 hadn’t been quite as innocent as she made herself 
 out, he got such a piece of his wife’s mind that he 
 stared at her in surprise. ‘Well, well. Maybe she 
 was, maybe she was,’ he recanted hastily, re- 
 flecting that it was useless to try to fathom his 
 wife’s likes and dislikes. 
 
 As it turned out, the implicit confidence which 
 the two girls had in each other made them excel- 
 lent partners, capable of acting quickly in an 
 emergency. Neither of them ever questioned the 
 good faith or the good judgment of the other. 
 
THE BOOKKEEPER vi 
 
 They acted with the speed and accuracy of acro- 
 batic partners on adjoining trapezes. 
 
 Mrs. Neilson had received from Norma a most 
 accurate description of her love affair. As she 
 listened to it she nodded knowingly. ‘Big flashy 
 guy and a country kid’ — and although Norma 
 winced a little at being compressed into so brief a 
 formula, she acknowledged its accuracy. One day 
 as they rode together in the trolley, there was a 
 block in the traffic which held up not only the car 
 in which they rode, but pedestrians as well. 
 When Mrs. Neilson turned to make an impatient 
 remark to her companion, she saw her rigidly 
 staring with an absolutely bloodless face out of 
 the window, and, following her glance, she saw on 
 which figure it was focussed. 
 
 With the speed of a cat, she gripped Norma by 
 the arm, and started to drag her from the car. As 
 she afterward explained — ‘How was I sure it 
 was him? How long do you have to look at a 
 donkey to see him?’ (and she didn’t say donkey, 
 either, she used another word). ‘You go make a 
 date with him for noon at Tim’s office,’ she com- 
 manded in a whisper. ‘I’ll call the police,’ and she 
 flew to the nearest telephone into which she 
 hurled the words: ‘Come to Tim Neilson’s coal 
 office at noon and pinch a masher.’ 
 
I2 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 As for Luman, now that a year had passed with 
 no trouble resulting from his flirtation, it had 
 seemed safe to come back. He had no fears of any 
 complications with Norma. In fact, the whole 
 matter had slipped into the background of his 
 mind, so that the sudden apparition of her pale 
 face staring at him from the crowd, for an instant 
 almost drove the blood from his own cheek. He 
 stopped to talk with her because he dared do 
 nothing else. He could not have a crazy woman 
 hunting him up at his hotel or dogging his foot- 
 steps on the streets, and she looked perfectly 
 capable of doing either. As a matter of fact, she 
 had no idea what she was doing. She automati- 
 cally repeated the words which Mrs. Neilson had 
 put into her mouth, and she stared at Luman like 
 a death-mask, only because once having fixed her 
 eyes upon his face, she did not know how to take 
 them off again. In the meantime the traffic had 
 started on, and Mrs. Neilson was at Norma’s 
 elbow to pilot her back to the car. Norma had 
 been overtaken by a nervous chill, and her teeth 
 were chattering like sleet against a window. Her 
 friend took a grim satisfaction in leading the 
 shaking girl close to the traffic policeman, so that 
 he might see her face, hear her teeth rattle, and 
 draw his own conclusions. Being a man of experi- 
 
THE BOOKKEEPER 13 
 
 ence, he drew them, and exchanged a comprehend- 
 ing glance with what he afterwards described as 
 the ‘little blonde wildcat.’ Then he did not re- 
 move his gaze from the retreating Luman until 
 the tall Stetson hat was lost in the distance. 
 Norma was finally dragged into Tim’s office 
 and propped into a chair. Her friend was deter- 
 mined that Luman should not be stalking the 
 streets of her city unless Norma was by his side. 
 If that could not be, let him take to the road ‘like 
 the rest of the dirty bums,’ she said. It was soon 
 clear that Norma could not be depended upon to 
 do or to say anything rational. She evidently had 
 not the least idea of what was being said to her, 
 and still less capacity to say anything for herself, 
 Mrs. Neilson fairly shook her with impatience, 
 then like a shrewd general, she turned defeat into 
 victory. ‘Well, if you’ve gone crazy, sit there and 
 gibber,’ she said. ‘I don’t know but it shows off 
 what he done to you more than anything you 
 could say. After all, the movie actresses don’t 
 talk,’ she commented to herself, ‘and they get it 
 across.’ So she patted Norma on the back, and 
 stood by the window waiting for Luman, who 
 presently arrived. When he saw three figures 
 where he had expected to see but one, he realized 
 that something serious was being staged, and 
 
14 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 turned to leave. But his exit was prevented by 
 three policemen, one of whom remarked, ‘That's 
 him, all right.’ 
 
 As Luman turned again to enter the room, 
 Norma rose and started toward him. She had 
 thought of him constantly for over a year. His 
 face had been in her thoughts by day and in her 
 dreams by night. She was at present in such a 
 thoroughly distracted state that she had entirely 
 forgotten the circumstances under which they 
 were meeting after so long a separation. She 
 could hold but one idea in her mind, and that was, 
 that Luman was here. He had come back as she 
 had dreamed a thousand times. 
 
 Norma had never been a beauty, and what 
 good looks she had, had been sadly impaired by 
 her trouble. But as she walked toward Luman, 
 her face flushed, her eyes unnaturally bright, her 
 lips half parted, her whole bearing transfigured 
 by her absolute devotion, she dominated the room 
 with her presence. Like a radiant sleep-walker, 
 she moved toward Luman, but Luman did not 
 move to meet her. Instead he backed away until 
 the policeman barred his passage. Then he stood 
 glaring past her with stony eyes. Norma drew 
 closer to him with her hands outstretched, but 
 Luman stared at her without a change of expres- 
 
THE BOOKKEEPER 15 
 
 sion. Then his voice broke the silence, ‘I never 
 knew the woman,’ he said slowly and deliberately. 
 
 At first Norma hardly seemed to understand 
 him. Then the brutality of his words hit her like 
 a blow between the eyes. She staggered back 
 against the filing-cases, the vividness in her face 
 and bearing quenched in an instant. The live 
 coals in her eyes turned to cinders. She looked 
 almost idiotic. In the moment of stillness follow- 
 ing his denial, the unconscious plagiarism of his 
 words was intensified by the faint crowing of one 
 of Tim’s roosters in the yard outside. 
 
 But there was one moment of stillness only. 
 Then the floodgates of Mrs. Neilson’s indignation 
 broke loose. She strode over to Luman, her face 
 blazing with scorn and contempt, and stood in 
 front of him. ‘You never knew her, yousay? You 
 never saw her before? She looks like a girl who has 
 just seen you for the first time, don’t she? You 
 come here, you sneak, you hound, you — you 
 MAN,’ in an ascending climax of abuse, and she 
 pointed toward the next room. Luman hesitated 
 a moment, then he preceded her through the door 
 like her prisoner. Tim looked after them in alarm. 
 But his alarm was not for his wife. He was 
 genuinely concerned for what his diminutive wife 
 might do to this hulk of aman. ‘Go easy, kid,’ he 
 
16. OTHER. PEOPLE'S? DAUGHTERS 
 
 called after her. But the slam which she gave the 
 door did not indicate that his advice was to be 
 heeded. 
 
 Luman and Norma’s avenger were closeted to- 
 gether for nearly half an hour. Then the door 
 opened, and Tim’s wife, flushed with triumph, 
 marched out of the reom with her head in the air. 
 Behind her stumbled the figure of Luman, a sorry 
 copy of what he had been when he went in. His 
 face was aflame and his eyes were red. He had 
 placed his wide felt hat on his head for quick de- 
 parture, but had then forgotten it, and its un- 
 steady perch pushed back from his forehead, gave 
 him almost a clownish aspect. When he reached 
 the middle of the room, Mrs. Neilson stopped 
 him, and standing at one side proceeded to de- 
 monstrate him as if he had been a freak in a side 
 show. ‘He has a bad memory, this guy,’ she said. 
 ‘He forgot that he knew Norma, but his memory 
 is coming back and he is remembering a lot more 
 things that he had forgotten, too. Four! A wife 
 and three children. Queer how they’d slipped his 
 mind. He can’t remember when he left the “‘ Pen”’ 
 last either, says he can’t remember ever being 
 there, but that’ll come back to him, too, I guess, 
 if he thinks long enough.’ Then from contempt 
 her voice changed to irony. In the smoothest and 
 
THE BOOKKEEPER 17 
 
 most silky tones she purred to Norma, ‘But it’s 
 all right, girlie. He says he’ll give you a nice big 
 check. How about a swell fur coat or a string of 
 pearls? That'll make it all right, won’t it, dearie?’ 
 Norma made no verbal answer, but she shook her 
 head violently from side to side, without raising it 
 from her arms. 
 
 ‘What? She don’t want a check?’ cried Mrs. 
 Neilson in mock amazement. ‘She must be crazy. 
 Here is a man who made love to her, and then in- 
 sulted her, and she says she don’t want his money. 
 Well, take a good look at her,’ she commanded 
 Luman. ‘That’s one girl who didn’t make love to 
 you for cash. You’re not likely ever to see an- 
 other. I hope the rest of them have sense enough 
 to wreck your bank account. I’d make her do it,’ 
 she added to the others, ‘if I thought he had one 
 — the poor boob. But I’ll bet he’s in debt for that. 
 swell hat.’ Luman said nothing to all this, and the 
 other men were equally at a loss what to do next. 
 If Luman had demonstrated to Mrs. Neilson’s 
 satisfaction that he could not marry Norma, and 
 if Norma refused to take a money settlement, 
 there seemed to be nothing to do with the man 
 but to let him go. They did not venture, however, 
 to decide this for themselves. But when Mrs. 
 Neilson suddenly stopped glaring at her captive 
 
18 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 
 
 and bent over Norma with her cheek against her 
 friend’s hair, the police sergeant inquired respect- 
 fully what she wanted them to do next. She called 
 over her shoulder, ‘I don’t care what you do with 
 him. Throw him to the cat’ — and then to their 
 astonishment she began to cry, murmuring over 
 and over into Norma’s ear, ‘ Poor kid, it’s a darn 
 shame. They ain’t worth it, Norm’, they ain’t 
 worth it.’ 
 
 The encounter with Luman had at least the 
 merit of being decisive. Since Norma no longer 
 took comfort in her dream world, she came back to 
 a world of fact, and took notice of what was going 
 on around her. She attended church regularly, 
 from which in due time a slender blond young 
 man used to accompany her home in the evening. 
 Mrs. Neilson was enormously interested in this 
 development. Although she took no risks of say- 
 ing the wrong thing to Norma, to Tim she re- 
 marked, ‘He looks like a sap, but I guess it’s all 
 right this time. This guy’ll stand without hitch- 
 ing.’ It was not fair to George to call him a sap. 
 Small and blond he undoubtedly was, but he was 
 no fool. He had come from a town like East Eden, 
 and Norma seemed to him like the girls at home. 
 He ran a Ford repair shop, and Norma had first 
 
THE BOOKKEEPER 19 
 
 attracted him by the ready way in which she 
 grasped the problems of his business. Her natural 
 business imagination reveled in managing his 
 affairs as it had dreamed over Luman’s specula- 
 tions. She often felt that she could make some- 
 thing out of George’s shop, although she had no 
 illusions that she could make anything out of 
 George. One evening on the way home from 
 church George asked her to marry him. He felt 
 very tender and sentimental in the moonlight. 
 He was sure that Norma was the smartest and 
 most desirable girl whom he had ever known, all 
 of which he told her, shyly, but with genuine 
 feeling. Norma stood still in the path while he 
 talked, and he could feel her arm growing rigid 
 under his. Then she said, ‘I’m not in love with 
 you, George, but I couldn’t marry you if I were. 
 I’ve been a bad girl. I was going to get married 
 once, but the man went off and left me because 
 he had a wife. And then I had a baby. And it’s 
 dead. There, now you know.’ And with that she 
 started off down the path by herself. But George 
 hurried after her and gripped her again by the 
 arm. He made her turn around and face him. 
 It had not been easy for him to listen to this con- 
 fession hurled at him with no warning, and from 
 a girl like Norma. As a rule he did not think 
 
20 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 quickly and it took him some time to make up his 
 mind. But in this moral emergency he showed a 
 decision which he lacked in ordinary matters, and 
 he rose to the occasion at once. That was what 
 made the impression on Norma. ‘Never mind it, 
 Norma,’ he said, looking her in the eyes, as she 
 now realized that Luman had never done. ‘I'd 
 marry you if you were a widow. And the way I 
 look at it, it’s about the same thing. You lost your 
 first husband the same as if you’d been married to 
 him, and I want to be your second. You won’t 
 lose me.’ The dignity and straightforwardness of 
 this immediate grasping of the situation took 
 Norma’s breath away. His moral integrity 
 eclipsed his physical and social shortcomings. 
 Norma accepted him because she had no emo- 
 tional weapons left with which to combat such 
 kindness. And so they were engaged. 
 
 Curiously enough, although Norma’s thoughts 
 were much more on George’s business than on her 
 own, there was nothing about him that irritated 
 her so much as to hear him talk about it. His 
 ideas of money were so inadequate. His caution 
 allowed him to venture no farther than an account 
 at the savings bank, ‘and what you really would 
 like to do,’ she sniffed, ‘is to tie it up every Satur- 
 day night, and hide it in the mattress.’ At such 
 
THE BOOKKEEPER 21 
 
 periods of exasperation she would protest to Mrs. 
 Neilson that she never could go through with it. 
 ‘I just can’t stand having such a dumb-bell 
 around,’ she scolded. But her wise friend would 
 urge, ‘Sit tight, dearie. There’s something wrong 
 with all of them. It might as well be that as 
 something worse.’ And then Norma would re- 
 member how George’s face had looked in the 
 moonlight when she told him her story, and she 
 would realize that she had no power within her to 
 send him from her now, even if she had really 
 wanted to. 
 
 So the wedding was set for September, and, of 
 course, the girls at the office were deeply interested 
 and eager for details, of which Norma volunteered 
 but few. 
 
 ‘She acts kind of funny for an engaged girl,’ 
 said the head stenographer, who was also engaged 
 and behaved quite differently. ‘You would think 
 it was her funeral and not her wedding she was 
 going to. But then she always has been kind of 
 queer.’ So they got her a bunch of flowers and a 
 handsome cut-glass dish, and the chief clerk, who 
 was considered quite a joker, made the presenta- 
 tion speech. 
 
 The burden of his remarks was to the effect that 
 the great thing nowadays, was not to get a man, 
 
22 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 but to keep him. ‘Let me tell you, Miss Norma, 
 he went on, warming to his theme, as the giggles 
 and ‘ You’ve-said-its’ of the girls testified that his 
 audience was with him—‘Let me tell you that 
 the big idea is to hang on to ’’em. I’ve never seen 
 your young man, but if he is too showy, you'd 
 better watch out. ~Handsome is as handsome 
 does, and unless you’re thinking of moving to 
 Utah, be sure he hasn’t got a wife already.’ With 
 these graceful and much-applauded words, he 
 presented the flowers and the cut-glass dish. 
 Norma received them with a very fixed smile, 
 which she knew was mechanical, but which she 
 was unable to remove. Neither could she say any- 
 thing. The kind-hearted girls, touched by the 
 fact that she seemed so deeply moved by their 
 gift, chattered volubly so that her silence might 
 not be noticed. When the attention had turned 
 a little from herself, Norma escaped from the 
 group and did not return. 
 
 Half an hour afterward, when all the girls were 
 back at their typewriters, the little filing clerk 
 whispered to the head stenographer: ‘It’s funny 
 how excited Norma is over her wedding. I just 
 went out to the coat-room to get my handker- 
 chief and there was Norma standing with her head 
 against the wall, and she was crying something 
 
THE BOOKKEEPER rae. 
 
 awful. She wouldn’t let me do anything. She 
 said she’d be all right, that she was only nervous. 
 But maybe her fella don’t treat her right, or 
 something,’ she added doubtfully. ‘No, I don’t 
 believe it’s that,’ said the head stenographer, who 
 was considered an authority on these matters. 
 ‘They say he’s a real steady fella. You’d know 
 that sort would be the only kind that a quiet girl 
 like Norma would look at — or who would look 
 at her,’ she added in a slightly patronizing voice. 
 ‘She was just upset over our surprising her with 
 that expensive present. You could see that it 
 made her real nervous. She felt it a lot. She’s a 
 nervous girl anyhow,’ she added. ‘I’ve noticed 
 that she’s never been the same since she had the 
 appendicitis.’ ° 
 
i oe st 
 iG i, ae hay 
 
 | a Be, , ay eri iy 
 Ae x bi) oa i we ‘a a as 
 
 Rone na as zi 
 a ae ee 1 oa) 
 
 oy ay Nas "s Ny 
 Nad palette) wen a ey 
 pre 
 
 i apthen Ne a in 
 
 aa 
 
 re 2) 
 ny Winey 
 
 
 
II 
 THE ALIAS 
 
STHEMAUIAS 
 
 Daydreams are the imaginary fulfillment of 
 wishes. There is a tendency, exceptionally strong 
 in early life, but sometimes lasting into maturity, 
 to supplement and alter the facts of life as they 
 are, by imagining them as we wish that they might 
 be. Runaway boys and girls are usually exces- 
 sive daydreamers, who attempt to escape from the 
 facts of the outer world to an inner world of fancy, 
 which is more flattering to their self-esteem. Day- 
 dreams excessively indulged in may in some cases 
 become even more real to the dreamer than the 
 facts of reality. 
 
II 
 PAB ALTAS 
 
 ‘LorNA DooNnE?’ ‘No, ma’am, I don’t think I 
 was named after a book. I think it was a cookie, 
 or something,’ said Lorna Doone sweetly in 
 answer to the matron’s question. However she 
 came by her name, it certainly seemed to fit her 
 well. She had long brown curls and a delicate 
 profile which she turned a little to one side as 
 much as to say — ‘Since I am so pretty, why 
 shouldn’t I have a pretty name?’ ‘I’m nineteen,’ 
 she went on. ‘I was born on the first of June, 
 1908,’ she added after a little hesitation. ‘And I 
 am an orphan. My mother died when I was a 
 baby, and then my father died, and now my 
 grandmother is dead. I got to get a job, and I 
 think I'll be a nurse.’ 
 
 It was indeed a sad situation — so young, so 
 beautiful, and alone, and her life to be dedicated 
 to the sick. The only intrusion of brute fact into 
 the tender picture was that the lady at the desk 
 was quite certain that ‘Lorna Doone’ cookies 
 had not appeared on the market in 1908; that 
 even if they had, that did not make her nineteen; 
 
28 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 and that beautiful unsheltered orphans are rather 
 rare. The chances were that Lorna had christened 
 herself at a recent trip to the grocery store, and 
 had set out to see the wor.d. Nothing would 
 swerve her from her story, however, and so she 
 was given a lodging at the club, and a night to 
 think it over. 
 
 Lorna was left to herself the next day. This 
 evidently made her quite uncomfortable, and she 
 seemed to be thinking deeply. In the evening, 
 after much whispering with some of the other 
 girls, she tapped at the matron’s door and entered 
 demurely. 
 
 ‘Are you ready to tell me who you are,’ the 
 matron asked, ‘or do you want to think it over a 
 few days longer?’ 
 
 Lorna showed not the faintest flicker of sur- 
 prise or dismay at this challenge. ‘I guess I may 
 as well tell you the truth,’ she said dreamily. ‘I 
 was afraid you wouldn’t like it, so I didn’t tell 
 — but Iam going to be an actress.’ She gazed 
 from under her long lashes to get the full effect of 
 this startling announcement. - 
 
 ‘Really,’ answered the matron briskly. ‘Is it 
 the chorus or the screen?’ 
 
 ‘It’s the films,’ replied Lorna eagerly. ‘I came 
 ap here to see a fella I met once, and he said I’d 
 
THE ALIAS 29 
 
 make a swell actress. They give you a thousand 
 dollars for clothes to start, and a hundred a week 
 while you’re learning. Of course you get more 
 when you've learned, but you start on that,’ she 
 continued with satisfaction. ‘I seen him twice at 
 the hotel and he’s going to bring me a contract — 
 me and three other girls.’ 
 
 ‘What’s the man’s name?’ asked the matron in 
 a business-like tone. 
 
 Lorna hesitated. ‘I don’t know his name ex- 
 actly, and the girls just called each other ‘‘dearie.” 
 But they’re awful nice girls and he’s a swell fella, 
 too,’ she added with much enthusiasm. 
 
 ‘Well, what’s your own name?’ continued the 
 matron. ‘I suppose you know your own name if 
 not theirs.’ 
 
 ‘Yes,’ laughed the girl. ‘It ain’t Lorna, it’s 
 Paula. Paula Pinkheart. The fella said that 
 would make a good stage name, too. I was named 
 for my uncle who died in the war,’ she added. 
 
 ‘The last war?’ asked the matron. 
 
 _ Paula looked a little blank. ‘Or maybe it was 
 the Spanish war,’ suggested the older woman. 
 
 ‘Yes, that was it. He died in Spain,’ answered 
 Paula in a pensive tone. 
 
 Then after a pause, during which the matron 
 was silent — ‘Can I go out to-night? I gotta see 
 
20. OTHER \PEOPLE'S;DAUGHTERS 
 
 that fella or I won’t get that job, and a hundred 
 dollars a week is pretty good for a beginner.’ 
 
 ‘Paula,’ said the matron severely. ‘I only call 
 you that because I’ve got to call you something. 
 But you can’t leave this place until you tell the 
 truth. I can’t have one of my girls telling such 
 lies. What is your real name?’ 
 
 Paula’s eyes began to fill with tears. Then she 
 put her head down on the table and sobbed. 
 
 ‘I think that you would feel better if you told 
 the truth,’ said the matron kindly. More sobs. 
 Then a faintly muffled ‘Celia’ emerged from the 
 buried head. 
 
 ‘Celia?’ echoed the matron. 
 
 ‘Yes, my name is Celia Claymore, and I forged 
 a coupla checks. So I run away here from Chi. 
 The girl who roomed with me, she stole all my 
 clothes, so another girl she told me to forge a 
 check and buy some more. So I did.’ 
 
 ‘I am sorry to hear this,’ said the matron. 
 ‘But I don’t think that I can learn another name. 
 We shall call you Paula while you are here. The 
 girls have already made it Polly and that’s easy 
 to say. Good-night.’ 
 
 ‘Good-night,’ whimpered Polly. ‘I’m awful 
 sorry I told you those lies, but I was so scared 
 they’d get me,’ and she trailed upstairs — her 
 
THE ALIAS at 
 
 sobs very noisy until she reached the landing, and 
 then subsiding quite briskly. 
 
 Telegrams to Chicago failed to substantiate 
 any charge against Celia Claymore or any one re- 
 motely answering her description. The usual 
 number of checks had been forged, but none by an 
 extraordinarily pretty young girl with long curls. 
 Moreover, the clothes which Paula was wearing 
 were not new, and an examination of her bag re- 
 vealed only a nightdress, a silver spoon, and two 
 glasses of grape jelly. People seldom forge checks 
 in order to buy grape jelly. It was evident that 
 the truth was yet to come. Plainly, Paula could 
 not be hurried. 
 
 A few days passed without incident, and Paula 
 began to get restless. During this time the checks 
 had not been mentioned, which was evidently a 
 good deal of a disappointment to her, and besides, 
 she hated the name Polly — it sounded so differ- 
 ent from Paula. 
 
 When the matron finally noticed that she was 
 hovering rather persistently in the offing, she 
 knew that it was time for another interview. So 
 she summoned her to her room. 
 
 ‘Isn’t it about time to tell the truth, Polly?’ 
 she said. ‘You know that you forged no checks. 
 You wouldn’t know how. What did you do?’ 
 
32 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘I didn’t do nothing,’ sobbed Polly, now quite 
 skillful with the water-works. ‘What could a poor 
 girl do? When my mother died, my father went 
 off, and I just went out and met a fella, and he 
 said to come with him and so I did. And I kept 
 house for him in a little bungalow. I had to live 
 somewhere and he treated me swell,’ she sobbed. 
 
 ‘And where was the bungalow?’ asked the 
 matron. 
 
 ‘New York. And I ain’t Polly. Peggy’s my 
 name, Peggy Ryan.’ 
 
 ‘I suppose the bungalow was on Fifth Avenue, 
 wasn’t it?’ asked the matron helpfully. ‘Most of 
 the little bungalows are on the avenue.’ 
 
 ‘Yes, ma’am, kind of on the side where the 
 trees are,’ sniffed Peggy. 
 
 ‘In Central Park maybe,’ suggested the ma- 
 tron. 
 
 ‘I don’t know just where. The fella always 
 took me out in a swell car. I didn’t go out alone. 
 That fella thought a lot of me.’ 
 
 ‘Polly,’ said the matron decisively, ‘I don’t 
 want any more such stories from you. What is 
 your real name and where do your parents 
 live?’ 
 
 Polly’s head was again on her arms and her 
 tears flowed freely. ‘In Pittsburgh,’ she wailed. 
 
THE ALIAS 33 
 
 ‘Why did you run away?’ continued the ma- 
 tron. 
 
 ‘Because a fella I met insulted me and I didn’t 
 dare go home.’ 
 
 ‘What fellow?’ 
 
 ‘A fella I met on the street. He took me off to 
 ride and I was afraid my father’d kill me, so I 
 ran away. You want my father’s name? He’s 
 Wallace Lemare, 15 Central Avenue, and my 
 name is Winifred Lemare. They always call me 
 Winsome for short.’ 
 
 Having confessed her sad tale, Winsome then 
 retired to the upper story to repair the ravages of 
 her recent tears, and to tell an admiring crowd of 
 girls all the details of her latest incarnation. The 
 matron had begun to frame a telegram to Pitts- 
 burgh, when the doorbell rang. A stout woman 
 with a red face and distressed eyes stood upon the 
 threshold. She entered and sank heaving and 
 breathless into a chair which creaked beneath her 
 weight. 
 
 ‘Is Aggie here? Aggie Pack?’ she asked anx- 
 iously. ‘I’m just about dead looking for that 
 child. I ain’t slept for a week, and the mister, he 
 can’t hardly work. They said you’d know about 
 her, maybe.’ 
 
 ‘Is she a very pretty girl with long curls?’ asked 
 the matron. 
 
34 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘Yes, that’s Aggie,’ sobbed her mother, ‘and 
 us living only three blocks away all the time and 
 dragging the pond down to her grandma’s where 
 we thought she’d drowned. Is she here? I'd 
 better go and tell her papa,’ said Mrs. Pack, ‘he’s 
 so worried.’ And she started toward the door. 
 
 Then she hesitated, and her face became even 
 redder than before. But its hue came not from 
 heat, but from embarrassment. She moved to 
 the matron’s side and whispered. ‘You may be 
 kind of surprised at the mister,’ she said; ‘he’s 
 peculiar. It don’t bother me, but I just wanted 
 you to know that he was peculiar. He’s a good 
 steady worker in the rolling mill, but he has his 
 ways. Aggie takes after her papa, I guess; she’s 
 not much like me.’ 
 
 With this she returned to the open door and 
 called to a figure lurking outside — ‘Papa, you 
 can come in. The lady says that Aggie’s here. 
 Aggie’s all right.’ 
 
 The matron was waiting with some curiosity to 
 see the peculiarities of Mrs. Pack’s mate, as she 
 ushered him in, but she was hardly prepared for 
 what she saw. Mrs. Pack, still hot and heaving, 
 sank back again to her chair with the fatigue of a 
 heavy woman who has lost sleep for a week. But 
 Mr. Pack stood, holding his green velours hat in 
 
THE ALTAS 35 
 
 his hand, and bowed politely, bending at the 
 waist. He wore a so-called ‘snappy’ suit cut on 
 the Spanish model. The trousers expanded into a 
 slight bell at each ankle where the legs were slit 
 and trimmed with buttons. The waist-line was 
 high with a satin sash, and Mr. Pack’s rather 
 grizzled locks were plastered into long sideburns. 
 What hair he had on his crown was pasted down 
 with the same care as his side whiskers, but the real 
 marvel was his face. Although quite evidently 
 he was born to be a swarthy man, his cheeks had 
 been massaged, cold-creamed, and adorned with 
 rouge. His small features, which attested his 
 paternity to the charming Aggie, were further 
 adorned with red upon the lips, and it was plain 
 that his eyebrows had received much attention. 
 
 The matron gazed at him, as all women auto- 
 matically must, with fascination. She wanted to 
 turn him around like a wax dummy and see how 
 it was done. Such absorbed attention naturally 
 pleased and flattered Mr. Pack. He asked 
 nothing more from the ladies than a fixed, atten- 
 tive stare from every one he passed. But his 
 self-respect demanded that — and he always got 
 it. He was used to it. He expected it. He lived 
 on it. He had wanted very much to find his 
 daughter, and he wanted very much to make an 
 
36 OTHER PEOPLE’S. DAUGHTERS 
 
 impression upon the ladies who had rescued her. 
 Accomplishing both happy results at once was 
 very pleasing to Mr. Pack, and he smiled fatu- 
 ously. . 
 
 It turned out that Aggie was fifteen, and that 
 she had got into the habit of prinking so long in 
 front of the glass before going to school, that she 
 had failed to learn the required portion of the 
 Declaration of Independence. She had thereby 
 flunked the history course and was afraid to tell 
 her mother. After leaving home supposedly for 
 her grandmother’s, she had sent a note that she 
 was about to end her unhappy life by drowning. 
 ‘I suppose I have been kinda sharp with her some- 
 times, and kinda close with the jelly,’ sighed Mrs. 
 Pack. ‘But it takes so long to make it, and Aggie 
 and her papa spread it on so thick that some- 
 times I put it outta sight so as to keep some on 
 hand. I never could make as much as Aggie wants 
 if I spent my lifetime at it. And Aggie sees her 
 papa dolling up, so she wants to,’ she continued in 
 an aside to the matron. ‘It seems pretty foolish 
 to me, but there,’ she added in defense of her 
 family, ‘the mister don’t drink nor gamble. He 
 gives me his pay regular, and I guess if he and 
 Aggie do kinda brag on their looks it ain’t as bad 
 as what lots o’ women suffer with their husbands 
 
THE ALIAS 37 
 
 and daughters. Yes, she and her papa goes to the 
 pictures real often. The mister says he likes to 
 take a pretty girl to a show, and no girl’s any 
 prettier than our Aggie. All her girl friends are 
 crazy over the shows, and lots o’ times her papa 
 takes them all. I get kinda sleepy myself, and my 
 glasses don’t fit very good for distance, so I don’t 
 take much interest in ’em, but Aggie’s friends and 
 her papa, they keep the run of the serials and 
 know all the stars, don’t you?’ she asked, and the 
 simpering Mr. Pack nodded assent. ‘Aggie never 
 goes any place but the picture show with her girl 
 friends and her papa. The picture house is just 
 around the corner. That’s what surprised me so 
 when she said she’d run off and got drowned. It 
 wasn’t like her. She never done anything like 
 that.’ 
 
 The news of her parents’ arrival had in the 
 meantime been brought to Aggie and she ap- 
 peared shyly on the scene. She wept her tearful 
 greetings on their shoulders, and her equally 
 tearful good-byes to the girls who had been, dur- 
 ing the week, so satisfactory an audience. The 
 reunited family then recovered its composure and 
 started out the door. But as they reached the 
 sidewalk they hesitated. 
 
 ‘Where shall we go? Home or to the pictures?’ 
 
38 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 asked Mr. Pack of his family. ‘Aggie ain’t seen 
 any pictures for a week, have you, Aggie?’ he 
 asked, in a tone expressing sympathetic regret 
 that one week should have been so lost. ‘There’s 
 a swell film at the Beejew and a new serial just 
 beginning called the “Trials of Trixie.”” Wanta 
 gor’ 
 
 Mrs. Pack paused and sighed, ‘You go if you 
 wanta,’ she said. ‘I’ll go home and get these 
 shoes off. They hurt. Supper’ll be ready when 
 you come, but I guess I can’t stand any more ex- 
 citement to-day.’ 
 
 ‘All right, Ma,’ agreed Mr. Pack. ‘You go on 
 home and Aggie and me’ll see the show. Aggie 
 needs a little fun after getting so homesick, don’t 
 you, Aggie?’ 
 
 The world of facts being thus disposed of in the 
 person of Mrs. Pack, the world of fancy held full 
 sway. Aggie and her father hurried delightedly 
 toward the enchanted palace of the pictures. 
 
 ‘The first installment ended where Trixie was 
 kidnaped by the rich crooks,’ Mr. Pack explained 
 ina whisper. ‘They raced her off in a big limou- 
 sine to a hall underground. It’s awful exciting,’ 
 he assured her. 
 
 ‘It sounds swell,’ sighed Aggie contentedly, as 
 they passed through the door. 
 
Ill 
 THE NEW HOUSE 
 
THE NEW HOUSE 
 
 Human wants or Wishes are the basis of human 
 activities, and the satisfaction of these wishes con- 
 stitutes wealth. That which, for any reason, a 
 person heartily and persistently desires, will dom- 
 inate his attention, and by so doing will infallibly 
 start and sustain action toward its attainment. 
 The clash between the fundamental wants of 
 foreign-born parents, and the wants of their Amer- 
 ican-born children, with a different social inherit- 
 ance, and the ensuing conflict in their standards 
 of what is socially desirable, is at the basis of many 
 family catastrophes. 
 
Ill 
 THE NEW HOUSE 
 
 WHEN the tired business man gets into his 
 machine at the end of a wearing day and drives 
 home, he longs for a quiet evening with his 
 family, or perhaps a ticket to the ‘show’ where 
 he can watch some pretty girls dance. When 
 Lena Denko folded her apron at five o’clock and 
 spread a cover over her power machine, she and 
 the other tired factory girls had similar longings 
 to those of their employer — with this difference. 
 They did not want to watch pretty girls dancing. 
 They wanted to be the pretty girls who danced. 
 Dancing was their ruling passion. They were 
 young and they were vigorous, and just as the 
 débutantes on the Heights could play tennis all 
 the morning, and golf all the afternoon, and still 
 wish to dance all night—so Lena and her 
 friends of the Acme Wire Factory could operate a 
 machine for eight working hours, dance during 
 their lunch period, down the corridors, through 
 the hallway, and in the cloakroom, and wait im- 
 patiently for their evenings at the Eldorado where 
 they could continue dancing until the lights were 
 
42 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 
 
 put out. All the other sports and activities which 
 they could not afford, which they had no time for, 
 and which they had never heard of, were concen- 
 trated in the walk, the toddle, and the trot. And 
 yet, as Lena started home after the whistle blew 
 that Friday evening, she knew that her chances 
 either of a quiet home evening or of foxtrots at 
 the Eldorado were about equal. In fact they both 
 exactly equaled zero. She and the other girls in 
 her section often discussed the matter among 
 themselves, but their arguments came to the same 
 deadlock. All of their fathers forbade dancing at 
 the Eldorado, and all of the girls were determined 
 to do it. Elsie was the only one of the four who 
 had hitherto had the courage to flout her parents’ 
 orders, extract the bills from her own pay enve- 
 lope, accept an invitation from one of the wire 
 men, and dance at the Eldorado until the band 
 played ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ for the last time. 
 
 ‘I got away with it,’ she whispered to the less 
 adventurous three: ‘and, Gee, it’s swell. And 
 I’m going again to-night, because my dad, he’s 
 going to his lodge. He’ll be out late himself and 
 too drunk to know.’ 
 
 ‘Who are you going with?’ inquired Lena, 
 fascinated. 
 
 ‘With my girl friend,’ whispered Elsie. ‘There’s 
 
THE NEW HOUSE 43 
 
 always lots of extra guys at the Eldorado. It’s 
 easy to pick them up. Come on, Lena,’ she urged. 
 ‘You can dance the trot fine. You'll get plenty of 
 partners.’ 
 
 Lena turned from her machine mournfully. 
 ‘My dad would kill me if I went,’ she sighed. ‘I 
 wish he would, anyhow. I wish I was dead now.’ 
 
 Such was Lena’s state of mind over her pro- 
 spects. What was the use of being a good dancer 
 if one could never dance? She took her pay en- 
 velope with its $13.33 in silence and walked 
 slowly home in the rain. She did not even dare to 
 open the packet and gaze upon the reward of a 
 week’s work. Only when the envelope was 
 tightly sealed would her father believe that its 
 contents had not been tampered with. Her money 
 was merely a family tax. She had no sensation of 
 having earned it, nor any pride in its possession. 
 Taxation without representation might be tyr- 
 anny, but Mr. Denko was building a house, and 
 every penny earned by every Denko was neces- 
 sary for its completion. Sore as she was, even 
 Lena could not deny that a larger house would be 
 more convenient. 
 
 As she entered the kitchen, Mrs. Denko was 
 trying to prepare the evening meal with the two 
 little girls hanging on to her skirts, and the two 
 
44 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS | 
 
 little boys running in and out with much clat- 
 Lou. 
 
 They seemed to be playing some game which re- 
 quired incessant dodging around and under the 
 table on which the dinner was to be eaten. Chris, 
 the eldest son, was taking off his wet boots by the 
 stove. The baby was screaming violently, and, 
 as Lena entered, her mother thrust him into her 
 arms — ‘There, take the kid,’ she groaned. ‘He 
 won’t stop yelling, and I’m about crazy.’ Having 
 given Lena the baby, she shoved the two little 
 girls after her into the next room, and adminis- 
 tered an ineffectual cuff to the boisterous boys, 
 who nevertheless continued their game of dodg- 
 ing as before. 
 
 The room into which Lena went with the chil- 
 dren held her cot, and that of her sister Bella. It 
 was also the parlor, but on account of the rain out- 
 side, Mrs. Denko had been obliged to string up a 
 clothesline in here, as well as in the two bedrooms, 
 ‘on which a wash was drying, The wet clothes 
 hung in front of the looking-glass so that Lena 
 could not comb her hair, but indeed the baby was 
 clawing at it so vigorously that prinking would 
 have been useless. She played with him faint- 
 heartedly. She was really too absent-minded to 
 bother with him, and the two little girls clinging 
 
THE NEW HOUSE 45 
 
 to her skirts fretted her, because they would not 
 leave her alone. 
 
 The other rooms were both bedrooms. In one 
 Mrs. Denko slept with the baby and the two little 
 girls, and in the other Mr. Denko slept with the 
 two little boys. Chris slept on a mattress in the 
 kitchen. They needed a larger house, and it was 
 the dream of Mr. Denko, a dream which he had 
 brought with him from the Old Country, to own 
 a good-sized house and to be monarch of his own 
 acre. He was even now in his own room, noisily 
 talking over the final costs with a carpenter. 
 
 Much as they all knew the house was needed, 
 no one but Mr. Denko felt the slightest elation at 
 the prospect of having one. The only land which 
 they could afford to buy was miles away from 
 their present neighbors, and Mrs. Denko dreaded 
 new ones whose language she could not speak. 
 It was many miles away from the children’s 
 school, from Chris’s poolroom, and from the 
 Eldorado. Although Mr. Denko could catch a 
 ride to work in a friend’s truck, the others must 
 walk half a mile of unpaved road to a street car, 
 in which they would cling to a strap for inter- 
 minable distances both morning and_ night. 
 Moreover, despite Mr. Denko’s steadfast dream 
 that his children would soon be marrying and 
 
46 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 renting rooms from him in the new house, his 
 children had no intention of doing anything of the 
 kind, and Mrs. Denko knew that they would not. 
 But she was unable to convince her husband that 
 such an arrangement would never be agreed to 
 by the unaccountable younger generation. It was 
 so sensible and so thrifty that Mr. Denko was 
 certain that they would, and that was an end to 
 it. There was to be a cow in the yard — ‘just 
 like the Old Country’ — boasted Mr. Denko, 
 and to Lena this was the last touch of ignominy. 
 If any suitor ever ventured so far as to come to see 
 her, which she doubted, he would be faced by 
 a cow. She knew how it would look. It would be 
 just like her grandmother’s. She buried her face 
 in the pillow. She felt that she could not bear it. 
 
 Meanwhile her father'accompanied the carpen- 
 ter noisily to the door, and then turned to his 
 family with satisfaction. ‘Well, I guess we get 
 into our new house soon already,’ he announced. 
 ‘We move out of here as soon as the rent’s up.’ 
 The silence which greeted this statement aroused 
 his temper, as it always did when he monologued 
 on his one subject of passionate interest, the 
 house. ‘So you don’t none of you want a new 
 house? You all like this pigpen?’ he asked an- 
 grily of the group. ‘Who am I building it for but 
 
THE NEW HOUSE 47 
 
 you and the kids? You don’t know nothin’,’ he 
 finished more specifically to his wife, who was 
 trying to engineer the meal on to the table be- 
 tween the scuffling boys and Chris who was shav- 
 ing at the sink. 
 
 Mrs. Denko knew emphatically that she did 
 not want to go to a half-finished house on a new 
 and lonely street, far away from her friends, even 
 if the house was owned by Mr. Denko. Its owner- 
 ship seemed a luxury far too dearly bought, and 
 she knew that her children agreed with her. But 
 they all came from a race where for generations 
 land has been the only wealth, and where the 
 father of the family is its lord. So none of them 
 spoke, although their silence increased his irrita- 
 tion. 
 
 ‘Who am I building for?’ reiterated Mr. 
 Denko. 
 
 ‘For yourself, and you know it damn well,’ 
 muttered Chris through his lather. 
 
 ‘What did you say?’ demanded his father. 
 
 ‘Supper’s ready. Better eat it hot,’ interposed 
 Mrs. Denko diplomatically. 
 
 ‘Eat it,’ snorted Mr. Denko, his anger rising. 
 “Who'd pay for what we eat? None of youse, if 
 you could help it.’ 
 
 At this statement, whose implications the chil- 
 
48 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 dren thoroughly understood, Chris drew his pay 
 envelope out of his pocket, opened it in their 
 presence, extracted five dollars for himself, gave 
 the rest to his father, and returned, without 
 words, to his shaving. Mr. Denko grunted and 
 turned to Lena. 
 
 She handed him her envelope without opening 
 it, and then, in a voice which astonished herself 
 as much as her hearers, she said, ‘I’d like five 
 dollars too.’ 
 
 Mr. Denko’s jaw dropped, and even Chris and 
 her mother turned and stared. The four small 
 children, feeling that something was afoot, stared 
 also. They were accustomed to family scenes and 
 could feel the electricity in the air. 
 
 ‘What d’ya want five dollars for?’ Mr. Denko 
 managed to gasp. 
 
 ‘A dress,’ murmured Lena faintly. 
 
 ‘A dress! Ain’t you got a dress on?’ 
 
 ‘I want another one. This ain’t no good,’ said 
 the voice in Lena’s throat which she felt to be 
 talking on without her control. 
 
 Mr. Denko was fairly speechless for a moment, 
 and then the flood broke. ‘A dress? You want to 
 be like damned American girls who stand showing 
 off on the street corners. You got one dress and 
 you want another one, when we ain’t got no 
 
THE NEW HOUSE 49 
 
 money to pay for plaster, and got to live in that 
 house all summer without paint on the walls. 
 Can we live all winter without plaster and without 
 paint? Tell me that. I see you going wrong, be- 
 cause you are with damned American girls in that 
 factory, and I tell you I’ll get you another job by 
 that carpenter’s brother. He’s got a laundry with 
 good Hungarian women. He'll pay you fourteen 
 dollars. You go to that laundry Monday and 
 you don’t need no new dress.’ And he would have 
 gone on elaborating this theme had not the ex- 
 pression on Lena’s face made him pause. She 
 was gazing at him with the color gone from her 
 cheeks. 
 
 ‘Hungarian laundry by that carpenter’s 
 brother?’ she echoed. 
 
 At this moment Bella opened the door wet and 
 hungry after a day at the ‘Five and Ten,’ but 
 paused on the threshold as she scented trouble. 
 The whole family was therefore assembled as an 
 audience for Mr. Denko’s answer: 
 
 ‘Yes, by that carpenter’s brother,’ he re- 
 peated. ‘Them American girls with their dresses 
 and their dancing are no good. You be better off 
 by good Hungarian working-women. And if 
 Bella gets smart and wants dresses, she can go 
 there too. That carpenter’s brother is good fella. 
 
50 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Maybe he marry one of you,’ he added with 
 a fatherly attempt at rough coyness. 
 
 But this was too much for Lena. ‘Marry that 
 Hunky! Marry that Hunky!’ she screamed 
 hysterically, and, thrusting the baby into Bella’s 
 arms, she turned and threw herself on Chris’s 
 cot, sobbing and groaning, ‘I wish I was dead.’ 
 
 Of course, the groans were not entirely occa- 
 sioned by the suggestion that she marry the car- 
 penter’s brother. Even Lena had too much sense 
 for that. This estimable widower was merely the 
 last straw in a nervous strain compounded of work 
 without hope, of dread of a new raw home among 
 strangers, of resentment over her attached wages, 
 of the failure to get a new dress, and of the con- 
 viction that never in a long and weary life would 
 she have the chance to foxtrot in fairy-land with 
 the happy beings who crowded its waxed floor. 
 The best dancer in the Acme to be buried in a 
 ‘Hunky’ laundry! Her only escape a widower 
 with three. Lena’s screams relieved her feelings, 
 and she continued to utter them. 
 
 Bella turned to Chris and murmured in a loud 
 aside — ‘Marry old Matthew? Hot Dog!’ 
 
 This was too much for Mr. Denko. He turned 
 to Chris. ‘So Matthew is a dog, is he? Ain’t 
 your sisters chickens, what they call? Ain’t old 
 
‘THE NEW HOUSE 51 
 
 dog better for chickens than fox or weasel? You 
 want your sisters going around like American 
 girls, no skirts, no stockings, no shawls on their 
 necks, no sleeves on their arms? What you want 
 your sisters to be? Girls on the streets? Ain’t it 
 better to marry a good fella and keep outta 
 trouble, than go round like crazy fools, so no fella 
 will marry them? Don’t they want no husbands?’ 
 he inquired somewhat helplessly of his wife. ‘Do 
 they think a good husband’s just going to buy 
 them dresses? You bet he ain’t,’ he added with 
 emphasis, sure of his ground on this point. 
 
 Never could righteous orator have had a more 
 unwilling audience. His rhetoric was gall and 
 wormwood to Lena, and to Bella as well. As for 
 Chris, he wanted nothing so much as to be out of 
 it. He was by no means a prude as regards him- 
 self, and he had a distinct taste for the kind of 
 ‘chicken’ whom his father so scornfully described. 
 In fact, he was in a fidget lest he miss a date with 
 one of them at this very minute. On the other 
 hand, he was fearful lest his own sisters might 
 behave as did various wild young women of his 
 acquaintance, and so disgrace the family. He 
 privately wished them both safely married to 
 somebody — anybody — so that they were safe 
 and out of danger. 
 
52 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Mrs. Denko by some maternal intuition, or 
 repressed girlishness, understood her daughters’ 
 aspirations in a way that neither their father nor 
 Chris ever could, and she dreaded the contest of 
 wills which she knew was inevitable. She had 
 succumbed to Mr. Denko for a lifetime, but she 
 well knew that her daughters would neither 
 succumb to him, to Matthew, nor to any one like 
 them. As for the five younger children, none of 
 them were interested in their father’s speeches. 
 All of them were hungry and clamoring for food. 
 
 Mr. Denko made one last angry outburst. 
 ‘You girls better be glad if some fool, any damn 
 fool, marry you before it’s too late. Some good 
 hard-working fella—  He’ll show you where you 
 get’ (he hesitated for his adverb) ‘where you-get- 
 uP!’ Bella glanced at Chris whose face was a 
 mask. Then she ran over to Lena, and the two 
 girls began to whisper and giggle hysterically. 
 Chris, buckling on his ready-made tie, refused to 
 look at either of them, but Bella shrieked at 
 him, ‘Say, Chris, Lena says that if old Matt tries 
 to show her how to get Up, or get By, she’ll show 
 him how to get ouT. Where we get Up! What 
 language is that? Oh the bees’ knees!’ — and 
 again the girls rolled in hysterical laughter, while 
 Chris with a red face, bent only on meeting his 
 
THE NEW HOUSE 53 
 
 appointment with his girl, snatched his hat, and 
 slammed the door behind him. 
 
 His children’s jokes were all that ever reduced 
 Mr. Denko to terms. Only a few days before, he 
 had entered the room scrubbed and dressed for 
 his lodge meeting, his big black mustache care- 
 fully waxed until it gave his face a ferocious and 
 manly appearance. This mustache was his one 
 claim to personal distinction, and he had admired 
 it for twenty years. He secretly marveled that 
 Chris steadfastly refused to raise one. But when 
 Chris rushed in and asked for his hat, Bella had 
 glanced at her father, and then, with a nod in his 
 direction, had asked Chris why he didn’t look on 
 the hat-rack. Then the three elder children had 
 suddenly screamed with such unaccountable 
 laughter that Mr. Denko and the baby had had to 
 laugh too, although both were equally innocent of 
 any inkling of the joke. For all his laughter, Mr. 
 Denko had felt vaguely uncomfortable. What was 
 Torallwaboutr? ‘Hat-racks’ ts Hot! dogs‘? and 
 ‘bees’? It was too much. He now sat abruptly 
 down to his supper and began to eat. When the 
 girls’ whispers struck him as suspiciously long- 
 continued, he ordered them to eat too. They ate, 
 but they ate silently, and neither of them ate 
 much. 
 
54 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 After the dishes were washed and the five 
 younger children put to bed, Lena announced that 
 she intended to follow them. Bella agreed that she 
 also was tired, and the door closed behind the two 
 sisters for the night. Their voices could be heard 
 for a time in animated whispers. Then they 
 apparently went to sleep. 
 
 Of course, if Lena had intended to go to the 
 dance with Elsie when she left the factory, she 
 was even more determined now. Her uncertain 
 future made the Eldorado appear as a golden 
 opportunity to be snatched now or lost forever. 
 Bella was her confidante, and was so sympathetic 
 that she agreed to stay away from the dance her- 
 self only because of the fact that she had not been 
 invited. It was agreed, however, that an invita- 
 tion should be provided for her on the next occa- 
 sion, and if it worked to-night, there would be 
 many occasions. Lena met her friends by way of 
 the window, and, fortified by much rouge to 
 divert attention from her working dress, she went 
 with them to the Eldorado. As Elsie had pro- 
 mised, they had no difficulty in securing partners 
 from the many young men who waited, scuffling, 
 outside the door. 
 
 But just as the promised land was reached, and 
 Lena’s dream of happiness was about to be real- 
 
THE NEW HOUSE 55 
 
 ized, she saw with horror that Chris and his girl 
 were on the floor, slowly but inexorably gliding 
 in her direction. She dragged her partner into the 
 dusky hallway, and almost sobbed into his ear 
 that she did not dare to’dance for fear that her 
 brother would tell on her. ‘I’m not just afraid 
 he will, I know he will,’ she repeated, so excited 
 by her adventure and its catastrophe that she 
 could hardly speak. 
 
 ‘I gotta go home,’ she moaned. ‘I gotta go 
 home, and go quick.’ 
 
 ‘Aw — don’t go home,’ said her partner sooth- 
 ingly, although he agreed with her that they had 
 better avoid trouble. ‘I know another dance 
 joint that’s better than this. We’ll go there. A 
 guy I know runs it. You’re too good a little 
 dancer to go home yet.’ And before she quite 
 realized what was going on, she found herself 
 driving with her unknown escort to what he 
 assured her was a much finer roadhouse several 
 miles away. 
 
 ‘That’s swell,’ Lena giggled in a reaction of 
 nerveus relief now that she had escaped Chris’s 
 eye. Then after a pause, ‘Say, kiddo,’ she asked, 
 ‘what name do you go by? I didn’t catch it when 
 we was introduced.’ 
 
 ‘My name is Jack Dempsey, and it’s the Prince 
 
56 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 of Wales’s place we’re going to,’ answered her 
 friend, putting his arm around her. 
 
 ‘Ain’t you comical?’ giggled Lena again. “Say, 
 don’t get too fresh.’ 
 
 On Monday night Lena met her father at sup- 
 per. She looked excited and flushed, but there was 
 a kind of courage about her too, a courage which 
 only the possession of money can give. Both her 
 father and her mother were in the kitchen, but 
 Lena’s business was with the father. 
 
 ‘You’d better let me stay at the Acme,’ she 
 said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘They 
 raised me to-day, and I get more than I would at 
 the laundry.’ At this she took out a new five- 
 dollar bill from her purse, and laid it on the table. 
 ‘Take that,’ she said, her eyes glittering. ‘It will 
 help pay the plasterer.’ 
 
 There was a moment of silence. Mrs. Denko 
 looked blankly at her, and then turned and bent 
 over the stove. Mr. Denko gazed doubtfully at 
 the bill and then at Lena’s eyes which still stared 
 at him with a metallic glitter. His own glance 
 dropped and he hesitated for a moment. But his 
 fascinated eyes could see nothing but the new bill 
 upon the table. It blocked his vision, and blotted 
 out every scruple. With a grunt he took the 
 
THE NEW HOUSE 57 
 
 money, thrust it in his pocket, and turned away. 
 Lena gazed for a moment at the backs of both 
 her silent parents. Then she gave a short laugh, 
 stepped quietly into the front room and shut the 
 door. 
 
 ‘But why blame it all on your father, Lena? 
 How did he know where you got the money?’ 
 
 ‘He knew all right. Where did he suppose I got 
 it? I’d be likely to pick it off a bush, wouldn’t I?’ 
 
 ‘But you told him you got a raise.’ 
 
 ‘Do they pay a five-dollar raise on Monday? 
 Friday’s payday, ain’t it?’ 
 
 ‘Maybe he didn’t know that factories don’t 
 raise a girl’s wages that way.’ 
 
 ‘He’s a working-man himself. He knows damn 
 well they don’t.’ 
 
 ‘But why don’t you blame your mother too? 
 She knew as much as he did.’ 
 
 ‘She had a hunch. But what could she do? 
 She’s all right, but she can’t do nothing. She 
 can’t even talk American.’ 
 
 ‘I suppose that we just can’t realize how much 
 your father wanted to get into that new house.’ 
 
 ‘Nor how much we kids wanted to keep out of 
 tb. | 
 
 ‘How long before Chris found you out?’ 
 
58 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘Two months.’ 
 
 ‘How much money did you give your father?’ 
 
 ‘Sixty-seven dollars besides my wages.’ 
 
 ‘Did he take it and ask no questions?’ 
 
 ‘Sure he did. Sixty-seven ‘‘plunks”’ is quite a 
 help toward plaster.’ 
 
 ‘What does he say now?’ 
 
 ‘He says now, I can’t come in the old hole. 
 It’s too good for me.’ 
 
 ‘But he feels badly over what you’ve done. 
 You know he does.’ . 
 
 ‘Sure he does. But I'll bet he feels worse that 
 they found it out before the house was paid for. 
 He’d feel more comfortable cussing me in a house 
 out of debt.’ 
 
 ‘Lena, be just to your father. He is a proud 
 man. He feels terribly over the disgrace.’ 
 
 ‘If he was so good, why didn’t he stop it?’ 
 
 ‘I suppose that he longed so hard for that house 
 to be out of debt, that he never stopped to think 
 about where you got your money.’ 
 
 ‘That’s just it. He thought more about the 
 house than he did about me.’ 
 
 ‘What do you think he should have done, 
 Lena?’ 
 
 Long pause and slow answer. ‘I don’t know no 
 one’s duty, Miss, but I know this. It don’t pay to 
 
THE NEW HOUSE 59 
 
 love money too much, and to want more things 
 that it buys than you can afford. It don’t pay 
 whether you’re rich or poor. My father 1s a poor 
 man, but he loves money just like the rich men 
 do. Maybe it’s gold and diamonds that are lux- 
 uries for them, but paint and plaster was luxuries 
 for him, and a new dress was a luxury for me. A 
 house is all right if you can afford it, but he 
 couldn’t. And a house you can’t afford is as bad 
 as diamonds you can’t afford, ain’t it? We all 
 want something we ain’t got, and we go crooked 
 to get it. That’s about the size of it.’ 
 
 ‘But, Lena — a house is more necessary than 
 diamonds, or even a new dress, isn’t it? It’s more 
 thrifty.’ 
 
 ‘Maybe it is, Miss. But if my father had given 
 me the dress I wanted, instead of buying the 
 house he wanted — if my father, instead of some 
 other guy, had thrown away his money on me 
 — he might not ’a’ been so thrifty, and we might 
 ’a’ been crowded — but I wouldn’t ’a’ been here.’ 
 
. yA NEP AAS ie 4 ety erty TAY 
 seu ie : Aba A iy ay: ht Ni NE ‘ eran 
 Aa ] TAA As) Oe Ve oh ed oft 
 
 ve er Mt Wy oh 
 
 , 
 « 
 
 Sy i 
 Ae 
 
 "7% 
 ; 
 Dh) \ ' 
 és hE OAL 
 4 oy Pr 
 / Bie 
 
 CA ys 
 A athe) 
 
 ) ia say 1 Yano Ry 
 
 Wa 
 
 ag 
 bP r'ggy Wan 
 lM os Sh ae 
 
 
 
IV 
 BULLIEVE ME! 
 
BULLIEVE ME! 
 
 Words as a symbol of thought, are essential if 
 human beings are to be able either to think clearly 
 or to express themselves to each other. The ab- 
 sence of an adequate vocabulary in which to ex- 
 press one’s emotional life, often has the serious 
 consequences of forcing the emotion to express 
 itself prematurely in more crude and direct ways 
 than words, and, particularly with young peo- 
 ple, forces crises which might have been averted 
 if action might have been deferred by adequate 
 speech. Sports and play, with their accompany- 
 ing words and actions, perform the valuable func- 
 tion of filling an otherwise vacant, wordless, and 
 hence dangerous leisure. 
 
IV 
 BULLIEVE ME! 
 
 IF she is rich and if her suitor comes to call, there 
 are many resources by means of which he may be 
 entertained. He may motor with her, or he may 
 dance. He may be taken to the garden or the bil- 
 liard room. And always he may be fed. All these 
 amusements still hold good, even though both 
 the lady and her lover may be dull as well as rich. 
 If conversation flags, there is the Victrola, or ice 
 cream. And there are tickets to the opera, where 
 even the dullest lady may smile sweetly, and 
 where even the most ponderous escort may at 
 least call a taxi, and provide flowers and candy, 
 if not wit. 
 
 Moreover, if both lovers are poor, but have 
 intelligence and resource, romance may still 
 flourish. Even though the boarding-house has no 
 room for callers, there is the park. Books (bor- 
 rowed and not bought) may be read, and all the 
 world discussed. An educated though frugal pair 
 of lovers on a bench beneath the bough, with a 
 book of verses and a sandwich, unless they are 
 too tired, and too worried, need little pity from 
 any one — as many of them will testify. 
 
64 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 But suppose the lovers belong to that large 
 group which has no training, no resource, and no 
 vocabulary. Suppose that the Victrola and the 
 matinée are equally unattainable, and that the 
 rooming-house affords no privacy for a courting 
 pair. There is still the park-bench, but there is no 
 taste for verses. No ability to discuss them, or 
 anything else. It is spring, and there is spring 
 restlessness and a desire for happiness. One 
 working day is over and another looms all too 
 near. They share the human urge to escape to a 
 world of dreams. But how can all this be ex- 
 pressed by lovers who have little imagination, no 
 abstract ideas, and no words? 
 
 Have you ever listened to them from a neigh- 
 boring bench? 
 
 ‘Bullieve me, he wuz scme guy. He says, 
 “Hello, girls,” he sez, and I sez, “‘ Hello, yourself.” 
 And he sez, ‘‘Where you going, cutie?”’ and I 
 sez, “I ain’t goin’, I’ve been and got back.” 
 That’s what I told him, and you’d oughta seen 
 him. Gee, he looked as though he’d lost his 
 buttons. Bullieve me, I can tell a guy where to 
 get off. “Just watch my smoke,” I sez. And he 
 sez, ‘ You’ve said an earful.” And I sez, “Bul- 
 lieve me, you’ve said it,” I sez.’ 
 
 But eventually the anecdotes are exhausted, 
 
BULLIEVE ME! 65 
 
 and no conventional phrases, however sparkling, 
 were meant to last a whole evening. What next? 
 Never shall I forget the scorn with which one girl 
 answered me when I asked of a certain dull couple 
 of our acquaintance: 
 
 ‘What in the world do they talk about?’ 
 
 ‘Talk,’ snorted she. ‘They don’t talk. They 
 hug!’ 
 
 How could the situation have been more briefly 
 or more accurately described? 
 
 With a country club or the matinée — or with- 
 out them, if there is some training in social in- 
 genuity — there may be legitimate aids to young 
 people’s conversation. But when the occupants 
 of the park bench have exhausted their slender 
 stock of words and ideas, but still have emotions 
 to spare, they indulge in the only activity which 
 occurs to them which they can afford. 
 
 Not long ago two young men came to our as- 
 sociation office on a delicate quest. With some 
 help from us, the information was extracted from 
 them that they were apparently in search of 
 wives. But how to get them? The girls they met 
 upon the street were tough. The young men 
 worked in a foundry where they saw no women, 
 and their only sources of society, the street, the 
 shop, and the boarding-house, offered them no 
 
66 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 chances for safe and sane romance. They were 
 desperate. As a last resort they attacked our 
 office, to be helped to meet some girls — object 
 matrimony. ‘We even thought,’ said they, in a 
 last impulse of self-depreciation and apology, 
 ‘that maybe there were two nice girls in a family 
 way, who would be glad of husbands, even if we 
 haven’t much money.’ Could any Sir Galahads 
 offer more? No cross-questions discouraged their 
 persistency.’ They submitted to examinations of 
 their mentality and their bank-books. Both were 
 slight, but satisfactory. What could any philan- 
 thropists do but promise introductions? 
 
 Such are the anomalies of human nature, how- 
 ever, that the few girls whom we knew, who were 
 indeed in need of honest young husbands, refused 
 even to look at the well-meaning suitors. Like 
 the rest of us they hated pity and they showed 
 considerable spirit in refusing even an introduc- 
 tion to men who might have felt that their com- 
 pany was a favor conferred. But some other pro- 
 tégées, not in so embarrassing a situation, an- 
 nounced themselves as ready to meet any young 
 men who cared to call. Despite our assumed 
 nonchalance, a sixth sense told them that some- 
 thing interesting was afoot. The club parlor was 
 selected as the place and Thursday evening as 
 
BULLIEVE ME! 67 
 
 the time. Promptly at seven-thirty the bell rang, 
 and two dumb young men, eager for romance, 
 were presented to a group of girls as eager and as 
 speechless. Had they been rich, there might have 
 been a theater party or a supper. Had they been 
 resourceful, there might have been parlor games, 
 music, or lively conversation. But they were 
 neither. There was no room for dancing, and no 
 music. Nor was there any desire to dance if there 
 had been, for no girl cared to dance with any but 
 the guests, and these were only two. Silence, 
 utter silence. In desperation, the matron, who had 
 considerately left them to themselves for a few 
 minutes, was recalled. Only she could force 
 answers from shy young swains by endless ques- 
 tions, and yet not at the same time invoke the 
 jealousy of the girls by such a monopoly of the 
 conversation. Suffice it to say, that after several 
 calls, by some means or other, two of the more 
 determined girls were wearing rings and making 
 preparations for their weddings. How was it 
 done? Surely not by words. And how would it 
 all have ended had not the club doors been open 
 to them, had not the matron been ready for first 
 aid to the speechless, and had not the character 
 and intentions of the young men been avowed as 
 ‘honest’ before the calls began? 
 
68 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Some weeks ago there fell into our hands a’ 
 letter whose obscenity was almost past belief. 
 It was written by a young workman to a girl 
 under our guardianship, and, since its indecency 
 was so flagrant, it seemed to justify an investiga- 
 tion. The young man responded promptly to our 
 summons, but as he entered the office, even those 
 of us who are somewhat accustomed to incon- 
 sistencies in conduct, stared at him in surprise. 
 Instead of a ruffian, there stood a rosy-cheeked 
 boy, carefully dressed in his best clothes for the 
 call, and with his mouth drawn down to a suitable 
 Sunday expression. Fearing lest we had the 
 wrong man, we placed the letter before Mike. 
 
 ‘Did you write it?’ we asked. | 
 
 ‘Yes, lady, I did,’ said he. ‘I hadn’t oughta 
 done it, but she was the only girl I had, and she 
 went with another feller.’ 
 
 No other explanation could he give. His girl 
 was a flirt. He was angry with her, and he told 
 her so in the only words he knew. 
 
 ‘What good did you think such a letter would 
 do?’ we asked. ; 
 
 ‘I was mad,’ he answered simply. 
 
 ‘Where did you hear such words?’ 
 
 ‘IT work with a steam-fitter all day, just us two. 
 He says those words, so I said ’em.’ 
 
BULLIEVE ME! 69 
 
 ‘Why don’t you get another girl, instead of 
 insulting this one?’ we inquired. 
 
 ‘Because I don’t know any, and I liked that 
 one.’ 
 
 ‘Do you expect any girl to come back to you 
 after a letter like that?’ 
 
 ‘She would if she liked me, but she don’t,’ he 
 said sadly. 
 
 Silence. Finally, after some study of Mike’s 
 disconsolate face, we ventured: 
 
 ‘Mike, you sound as if you were lonesome, so 
 lonesome that you did not care what you said.’ 
 
 Quickly he leaned over the table with the first 
 sign of life in his eyes. 
 
 ‘Lonesome, lady, you’ve said it. Lonesome is 
 what I am. I don’t know anybody else, and I 
 liked that girl.’ 
 
 He stalked out of the room with a lingering 
 sidelong glance at his enchantress who sat outside. 
 
 Did we imagine it, or was there a flicker of 
 forgiveness in her eyes, as he gazed miserably at 
 her? Had she merely meant to administer a 
 rebuke as preface to a later pardon? Did she 
 really understand, as well as we, that his furious 
 jealousy was a tribute to her hold on him, and that 
 his words were a mere accident due to the fact 
 that he had no legitimate language of emotion? 
 
70 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 If a man is wretchedly angry, he must express it 
 somehow, and to a woman it must be in words. 
 If any fine phrases of passion are unknown to 
 him, he must use the only forceful words in his 
 vocabulary. Mike’s confused obscenities were an 
 attempt to express a jealousy as overwhelming 
 as Othello’s, just as-‘Shake a leg, chicken,’ would 
 be his way of saying, ‘Come into the garden, 
 Maud.’ 
 
 Recently I was honored by an invitation to be a 
 member of a committee to provide instruction for 
 working-girls — girls of intelligence, but no social 
 training in American ways. Various plans were 
 suggested for filling the gaps in their education, 
 but with the memory of many awkward courtings 
 in my mind, my one request was this: ‘Give girls 
 who are poor, the equivalent of what rich girls 
 get at dancing school, in dramatics, sports and 
 games. Teach them how to entertain their beaux 
 — beaux who are without money, without poise, 
 and without words, but who long, like the rest of 
 us, for beauty and romance. Teach them fifty- 
 seven varieties of entertainment — by twos, by 
 threes, and by roomfuls. Teach them how it can 
 be done with more words and less “hugging.” 
 For they need to know — bullieve me!’ 
 
V 
 ESTELLE AND SAM 
 
ESTELLE AND SAM 
 
 Adaptation of one’s own personality to that of. 
 one’s relatives, is one of the prime requirements 
 of family life. Young people who have not been 
 trained to such adaptability during their forma- 
 tive years, by normal family relationships, find it 
 almost impossible in later life to maintain a nor-. 
 mal home of their own. They tend to escape the 
 irksomeness of family requirements by means of 
 desertion, vagrancy, and resistance to any tie that 
 forces the adaptation of their behavior to that of 
 others. 
 
V 
 ESTELLE AND SAM 
 
 PeruAps the love-affairs of Estelle and Sam 
 would not have impressed me so deeply if they 
 had not been the first. But it had happened that 
 on my earliest visit to the court-room, Estelle’s 
 slim little figure was standing before the desk 
 of the Juvenile Judge, while her sulky young 
 husband glowered on the other side. Estelle was 
 in tears, and Sam was in no pleasant temper, for 
 the sermon he had just listened to from the Judge 
 was not flattering. The facts were that Sam, 
 despite his twenty-two years, had already mar- 
 ried twice, and that he had both wives at once but 
 supported neither of them. 
 
 He was a rather handsome blond fellow with 
 broad shoulders which looked fitted for work, 
 although work was the last thing that interested 
 Sam. He claimed that he had been tricked into 
 his first marriage by a girl whom he met in Seattle 
 when he was in the navy. After a short honey- 
 moon she had disappeared, and Sam being trans- 
 ferred to an Eastern city had no time nor money 
 to look her up. He said quite frankly and de- 
 
74 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 
 
 cisively that he did not care what had become of 
 her, and that he had no money to spare for a 
 divorce, even if he knew. So what was a young 
 fellow to do? In the meantime Estelle had re- 
 cently got out of the orphanage where she had 
 spent most of her life. She was pretty in a slight, 
 childish way, and had a pert, saucy manner of 
 speaking which was attractive and passed for wit. 
 She could read and write, but never did if she 
 could avoid it. She could do simple arithmetic 
 with equal dislike. So it was natural enough that 
 she should play truant when she could, in order, 
 to dance at Luna Park, and exchange repartee’ 
 with the dancing partners whom she met at this, 
 the only place she had to meet them. There was 
 no anxious mamma to see that Estelle met an 
 eligible young man. She had to do that for her- 
 self, and her childhood at the orphanage, mothered 
 by an overworked matron, had not trained her 
 judgment in the selection of a husband. 
 
 So Sam and ‘Stell’ were married, and the baby 
 was born six wecks later in the Charity Hospital. 
 For in the meantime, the news of Sam’s first 
 wedding had got abroad and he had been in the 
 workhouse, quite unable to provide care for his 
 new wife and baby, even if he could otherwise 
 have done so.” 
 
ESTELLE AND SAM 78 
 
 Of course the weak point in Estelle’s case was 
 that she had always known that Sam was already 
 married, and reflection would have told her that 
 even their belated wedding was rather ineffectual. 
 But there was no doubt that she was much in love 
 with Sam, and how should one expect her to re- 
 flect? She was not a deep thinker by inheritance, 
 for the records showed that her improvident and 
 irresponsible parents had been very familiar with 
 the court-room in which she was now standing. 
 Moreover, her training had not cultivated any 
 capacity which she might have had for foresight. 
 She had been passed from an orphanage to in- 
 dustrial schools and detention homes, with no 
 more chance for individual initiative than a 
 private in the army. What wonder, then, that 
 when she was at last set free, and danced dur- 
 ing long summer evenings with a sturdy young 
 blond stranger, that it went to her head, and that 
 his legal entanglements with an unknown lady 
 seemed unimportant? 
 
 And one must not be too hard on Sam. He 
 himself was the product of a union in which the 
 father’s part consisted mainly of desertion, varied 
 only by reappearances to demand the moncy 
 which his wife had saved up during his absence. 
 Naturally enough, Sam had taken to the streets, 
 
76 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 
 
 where crap-shooting and petty thieving had given 
 him his conception of finance. And his other 
 social affiliations had been such that he secretly 
 thought that it was rather handsome on his part 
 to have gone through any wedding ceremony at 
 all, with either wife. He was utterly speechless 
 before the Judge, but his face spoke his thoughts 
 plainly: 
 
 ‘Why all this fuss? Estelle is all right, ain’t 
 she? She has a ring that cost me five “bones,” 
 hasn’t she? Hospitals are supposed to take care 
 of kids, ain’t they? A fellow couldn’t support 
 any one while he was in the workhouse, could he? 
 How could he tell where his first wife was? 
 Maybe she was dead. How did the Judge know 
 she wasn’t? Anyhow [a glare of reproach at 
 Estelle], if she doesn’t stop crying to the gallery 
 for sympathy, I’ll give her something to cry about 
 when we get home.’ 
 
 Estelle began to grasp this last thought herself, 
 and one could see her reflections in her face. 
 
 ‘ After all, it’s Sam I’ve got to live with, and not 
 the Judge, or the witnesses. I’d better begin to 
 play up, not to the gallery, but to Sam.’ 
 
 These changes of front in the court-room oc- 
 casion no surprise when one is a veteran in the 
 law. But when witnessed for the first time it 
 
ESTELLE AND SAM = 
 
 gives the observer a decided jolt, when the plain- 
 tiff who has been telling without reserve of her 
 own injuries and the infamy of her lover, suddenly 
 changes her tactics, and testifies that nothing in 
 the world shall separate her from her unworthy 
 mate. Yet it was reasonable enough. For where 
 else in the world had Estelle to go but to Sam? 
 At least she counted for more in his life than she 
 did in the life of any one else, and Sam on his side 
 admitted that Estelle was a ‘cute kid’ when she 
 didn’t ‘jaw’ too much. Moreover, both of them 
 were rather interested in the baby, who bore a 
 flattering likeness to his father. Sam, in expansive 
 moments, boasted of his broad-shouldered baby 
 as a future ‘pug,’ and ‘Stell’ hovered and fussed 
 over it, as the first real blood relative that she had 
 ever possessed. 
 
 The Judge, beneath his fatigue and exaspera- 
 tion, felt a great deal of sympathy for the undis- 
 ciplined young couple, and upon Estelle’s prompt 
 assertion that she wanted nothing so much as to 
 live with Sam, and his sulky promise that he 
 would turn over a new leaf, they went off side by 
 side dragging the sleeping baby behind them in 
 his go-cart. . 
 
 They started housekeeping in a three-room flat. 
 Sam had a job at twenty-five dollars a week, the 
 
78 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 first wife was somehow or other disposed of by 
 the kindly judge, and the stage seemed set for 
 living happily ever after. 
 
 But it seems to be hard to begin living happily 
 ever after if you have never been taught how to 
 doit. Ina month Estelle called upon us, in tears. 
 She was terribly lonesome, and Sam got mad at 
 her for crying, which made her cry all the harder. 
 If institutional life had trained Estelle for any- 
 thing, it had trained her to enjoy a crowd. She 
 had cooked with ten girls in the kitchen, and 
 washed with twenty girls in the laundry. All her 
 housewifely tasks had been accompanied by what 
 is known as ‘joshing’—a gay kind of gossip, 
 often pointless and sometimes unrefined. But in 
 any case it was sociable and interminable, and 
 Estelle had been rather famous for what was 
 known as her ‘Marathon jaw.’ Now for four 
 weeks Estelle had been living in solitude save for 
 a husband who left at six-thirty every morning, 
 and a baby who slept all the time. In the eve- 
 ning, they could not leave the baby alone and go 
 out together. Sam claimed that no young fellow 
 could be expected to sit with a kid every evening, 
 and Estelle retorted, that after ten hours of soli- 
 tude she needed to get out more than Sam did. 
 To this Sam replied, ‘What did you want to get 
 
ESTELLE AND SAM 79 
 
 married for?’ And Estelle, who by this time was 
 getting hysterical, screamed that she wished she 
 hadn’t. Such a remark was, of course, a good 
 excuse for Sam to snatch his hat and shout as he 
 slammed the door, ‘I divorced one and I can 
 divorce two,’ and Estelle’s last shot, ‘You'll get 
 the workhouse for this,’ fell on no ears but those 
 of the placid baby, whom his frantic mother now 
 fell to kissing until he howled with her in unison. 
 
 The first time this happened, Estelle was 
 brought to reason rather quickly, and Sam, who 
 was equally shamefaced over his fit of temper, did 
 penance by taking both his wife and baby to a 
 movie. Fora while quiet reigned. But it was only 
 temporary. The outbursts began to come about 
 once a week and sometimes oftener. In vain did 
 Estelle’s friends plead with her to keep her temper 
 and her tongue quiet. Her days of loneliness with 
 no one but the baby to talk to irritated her so 
 much that the sight of Sam coming through the 
 door with the salutation, ‘Let’s eat,’ let loose a 
 torrent of words, which Sam after a day in the 
 coal yards was in no mood to listen to. As a 
 matter of fact, Sam thought he had behaved 
 pretty well. Three months of steady grind for a 
 fellow used to short jobs interspersed with loafing 
 and ‘shooting pool’ were beginning to tell on his 
 
80 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 nerves, and he, as well as Estelle, missed the easy 
 give-and-take of his former crowd, who now 
 joked him as he passed and called him a ‘family 
 man.’ Being a family man is no slight under- 
 taking if you have not been brought up to it, nor 
 being a family woman for that matter. 
 
 There came some-weeks when Sam did not 
 show up at all, either at home or at his job, which 
 he naturally lost. It was evident that, if Sam 
 would not support the baby, Estelle must do so, 
 and a place was found for her where she could do 
 housework and board her baby near by. There 
 were several servants in the house, so Estelle had 
 the social life and conversation which she had 
 previously missed, and the police finally succeeded 
 in locating Sam and bringing him in to state his 
 side of the case. His story was brief and to the 
 point. He would agree to pay for the support of 
 the baby, but no one could make him listen to the 
 ‘line of talk’ that Estelle gave him every night. 
 Any one who had seen Estelle in a tantrum knew 
 just what he referred to, but Estelle could only 
 protest between her tears that although she knew 
 she shouldn’t scold her husband, she could not 
 help it. Her explanation of her temper threw so 
 much light on all the girls of her type, that we 
 never failed to think of it with other young people 
 
ESTELLE AND SAM 8I 
 
 brought up as she had been. ‘I never could get 
 any attention paid me in the Home unless I lay 
 on the floor and kicked, and I don’t know how to 
 ect anything any other way,’ she sobbed. *I know 
 it makes Sam sore, but I just see red,’ she added. 
 
 So the flat was given up, and for a time their 
 affairs ran so much more smoothly, now that 
 Estelle and her husband did not live together, that 
 it seemed useless to urge them to try joint house- 
 keeping again. The only difficulty was that Sam 
 seemed still to have such a grip upon his wife’s 
 affections. She asked for him continually, gave 
 us pictures of the baby to give to him, and even 
 made some of her especially nice cookies for his 
 birthday. He himself had an odd way of making 
 her an occasional call and taking her to a show, 
 only to disappear again after having left his 
 monthly pay for the baby who continued to grow 
 up in his image. 
 
 Then his visits became less frequent and the 
 baby’s board money ceased altogether. Estelle 
 harassed us with telephone calls and notes. 
 Where was Sam? Was he going with another girl? 
 Knowing his habits this seemed likely, and sure 
 enough, on investigation, it turned out to be true. 
 Reports came from various quarters that Sam 
 and a sprightly brunette had been seen together at 
 
8277. OTHE RGR EOPEE S21 DAUGHTERS 
 
 several balls, despite the fact that on one occasion 
 a friend of Estelle’s had been careful to let the 
 dark lady know that Sam was already married. 
 Sam did not deny the charge. It must be said in 
 Sam’s favor that he never did deny it. He always 
 maintained that he did not have to lie; they came 
 without it — all of which was sadly true. How- 
 ever, the dark lady laughed scornfully, and the 
 next we heard was the frantic voice of Estelle 
 over the telephone informing us that she had it on 
 good authority that Sam had married again. An 
 inquiry at the marriage license bureau proved that 
 she was correct, and that Sam had once again 
 ventured upon matrimony without the formality 
 either of a divorce or of removal to another city. 
 
 If ever Estelle had a tantrum, she had one then. 
 There was no doubt that she was fond of Sam. 
 Whatever she had done before she met him, she 
 had not swerved from her devotion to him since 
 their marriage. She could do everything in the 
 world for him but hold her tongue. And now that 
 he had left her for another woman she made no 
 effort to hold it. ‘She would get him and get him 
 good.’ ‘She would show that black-faced girl 
 where she got off,’ and so on, and so on. So the 
 charge was made against him by his wife, and 
 once more, within a year and a half, Sam stood 
 
ESTELLE AND SAM 83 
 
 betore the Judge’s desk and faced the charge of 
 bigamy. 
 
 He and Estelle had been married in another 
 State, which necessitated some delay in looking 
 up the record of their marriage, and during that 
 interval Sam was committed to the workhouse. 
 This left both wives at large in the same city. 
 Suddenly we heard nothing of the affair. Estelle 
 seemed to have quieted down, and to our astonish- 
 ment we learned that she had succumbed to a 
 morbid curiosity to see her rival and had called 
 upon her at Sam’s new flat. From seeing her, the 
 acquaintance had progressed so rapidly that the 
 two girls spent all of their free time in one an- 
 other’s company and were known to have had not 
 only long confidential talks together about the 
 man they both loved, but to have had luncheon 
 with Sam as an invited guest on his release from 
 the workhouse. Later, Sam was taken to see the 
 baby, in whom he had shown much interest of late, 
 and, to the consternation of all the friends, Estelle 
 announced that she wished to drop the case. 
 
 If a wife prosecutes her husband for bigamy, he 
 can be put in the ‘Pen.’ But unless she or his un- 
 lawful wife, or some one else is interested enough 
 to pursue the matter, it drops of its own weight, 
 and such seemed likely to be the fate of the suit 
 
84. OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 against Sam. Whether when he was faced with 
 his former wife he had a revulsion of feeling in her 
 favor, or whether it was the baby, who was a boy 
 any man might be proud of —or whether it was 
 the less sentimental prospect of three to five years 
 in the ‘Pen’ — who shall say? At any rate, Sam 
 was swinging back.to Estelle, who was looking 
 very pretty and stylish in some new clothes she 
 was buying by installments. His renewal of de- 
 votion was the more easy, as the dark lady had 
 other friends who were willing to console her, and 
 it was rumored that she had given up the flat and 
 sold the furniture. 
 
 We saw little of Estelle during this period. 
 Occasionally she called us up to say she would 
 never speak to Sam again, and that she intended 
 to begin the prosecution. But since the next day 
 invariably brought a recantation, no one paid 
 much attention to her. We were too thoroughly 
 out of patience with them both to bother with 
 them. Finally we heard that ‘Stell’ had taken a 
 flat and that Sam was living in it, although his 
 wife kept her housework position in order to pay 
 the baby’s board. Apparently she had given up 
 the struggle of trying to make Sam pay it, and he, 
 without that responsibility, was willing to live in 
 her flat so long as she paid the rent. 
 
ESTELLE AND SAM 85 
 
 So that is how it stands. Sam is working and 
 Estelle is working. Estelle is rather more steadily 
 at work than Sam, and the baby’s board and 
 Sam’s stylish suits are much more likely to be paid 
 for out of her pocket than out of that of her re- 
 claimed husband, although he pays her way hand- 
 somely to an occasional show. 
 
 So long as she does not live with him, she does 
 not scold him quite so much, and so far Sam has 
 not married again. There is no doubt that Estelle 
 loves him, and there is no doubt that she loves the 
 baby. There is no doubt that Sam is proud of the 
 husky boy who resembles him so closely, and, 
 while there may be some doubt as to how much 
 constancy of affection Sam is capable of toward 
 any woman, at least he has been married to Estelle 
 longer than he has ever been married to any one 
 else, and whatever his lapses in behavior, they 
 have not as yet sent him again to the workhouse. 
 
 Both Sam and his wife are on most friendly 
 terms with the dark lady and with her husband, 
 and they often play cards with them on a Sunday 
 evening. They even joke about the resemblance 
 between their two eldest children. 
 

 
vI 
 GERTRUDE AND GUS 
 
GERTRUDE AND GUS 
 
 The exhibitionistic impulse, strong in infancy, 
 which is the desire to force one’s own person con- 
 tinuously upon the notice of one’s associates, re- 
 mains unusually prominent in some people, in 
 their later life, especially if its normal develop- 
 ment has been suppressed. The impulse to be no- 
 ticed and to win approbation is in itself normal 
 if kept within bounds. But it may be warped by 
 early training into an absorbing appetite for at- 
 tention, which is certain to cause friction in so- 
 cial and family life. 
 
 A constructive method of utilizing this impulse 
 is by training the individual, through recreational 
 and artistic expression, to be able to win legiti- 
 mate praise because of creative achievement. 
 
VI 
 GERTRUDE AND GUS 
 
 OF course, the great trouble with Gertrude was 
 that she didn’t start right. Her father, at the 
 first hint of her arrival, had run away as fast as 
 he could, and, while her mother could not do the 
 same, it was not because she would not have been 
 glad to. Although Gertrude was sixteen when we 
 first met her, her mother was still blaming her for 
 being born. ‘Gosh, that woman can’t forget it,’ 
 said Gertrude with disgust. ‘I don’t suppose she 
 did want me. But a kid can’t help being born — 
 as I see it.” Which reflection seemed as just as was 
 her further remark, ‘It seems to me it was as 
 much her fault as mine.’ 
 
 However, Gertrude’s mother absolutely re- 
 fused to take any responsibility for her advent, 
 and took no interest in her fortunes. Gertrude 
 had been obliged to look out for herself, and it 
 cannot be said that she had made a very good job 
 of it. She told her story with that disarming 
 frankness of a girl thrust out into a wicked world 
 too young to develop the usual repressions of 
 speech, from sheer lack of knowledge that any are 
 
90 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS | 
 
 necessary. Goodness, badness, marriage or the 
 lack of it, this fellow or that, truancy from one 
 school, and raids in another hotel — all made up 
 one muddle of experiences and escapades, from 
 which one standard alone apparently emerged. 
 Gertrude had decided that she wanted a HOME. 
 Her ideas of what a home might be were certainly 
 not derived from any of the rooming-houses oc- 
 cupied by herself or her friends. But she had, as 
 it turned out, a romantic nature, and, while other 
 flappers went to the movies to thrill over the love 
 scenes of their favorite stars, Gertrude found 
 her inspiration in the kitchen and fireside scenes 
 from ‘The Old Homestead,’ ‘Way Down East,’ 
 and kindred dramas. 
 
 ‘I’d like a job where there was an old couple 
 whose children were grown up, and who would sit 
 around the lamp in the evening. I want to talk to 
 the old lady and to call her mother, or grandma, 
 or something.’ Gertrude was a romanticist, and 
 while she was talking about her old couple she 
 really meant what she said. But she had I hate 
 to think how many years of restless habits behind 
 her, and she could not change them all at once. 
 So, the next time we saw Gertrude, although a 
 home had been found for her, interest in the old 
 couple had waned, and interest in Gus was at its 
 
GERTRUDE AND GUS oI 
 
 height. Gus was a fireman, which meant, of 
 course, that he had a good pair of shoulders and a 
 uniform. Such a combination is damaging to the 
 peace of mind of any girl of sixteen, but to Ger- 
 trude it was fatal. A city employee, in uniform, 
 who dashed through the streets on a red truck, 
 and told tales of hairbreadth escapes from burning 
 buildings — such was Gus, and he played his 
 Othello to her Desdemona, pleased enough to 
 have so breathless an audience. As for Gertrude, 
 her head was completely turned, and her heart 
 melted within her. We could not share her en- 
 thusiasm over Gus. Shoulders he undoubtedly 
 had. But his face was like a weasel, and his eyes 
 were shifty. However, it was apparent that Ger- 
 trude needed a home more than ever, and since Gus 
 seemed, in his unmannerly fashion, willing to 
 furnish it, there was nothing to do but to help 
 them settle. Again Gertrude’s china-blue eyes 
 gazed into ours with a frankness that seemed 
 almost unearthly. ‘Gus always said that he would 
 marry me if he had to, and now he has got to, and 
 so he says he will.’ On this chivalrous basis, Gus 
 and Gertrude went to the City Hall. There could 
 be no church wedding, for Gus was a Catholic and 
 Gertrude, for some reason, had decided that she 
 was a Protestant. We could not discover why she 
 
92 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 thought so, until she said, cheerfully: ‘They say 
 if you are Catholic you go to church, and I don’t 
 go, so | must be a Protestant — and I won’t turn 
 Catholic for any mutt.’ 
 
 The theological question being thus settled, the 
 ceremony was performed, and Gertrude trudged 
 to their new flat full of hopes of having a home at 
 last. It bothered us a good deal that both Gus and 
 Gertrude had thought it necessary to stock the 
 rooms quite so thoroughly with heavy stuffed 
 furniture for which they were to pay fifteen 
 hundred dollars, by installments. Being abso- 
 lutely dependent upon Gus’s wages, which were 
 not large, and with other inevitable expenses 
 ahead, such very heavy rocking-chairs and 
 such very large lamps seemed unnecessary in an 
 apartment so small that one’s shins continually 
 knocked against the carved and tasseled trim- 
 mings. 
 
 But this particular style of furniture had 
 adorned the vivid scene in Gertrude’s imagina- 
 tion, and now that she had a chance to see herself 
 against so rich a background she could not bring 
 herself to start with less. After all, she was only 
 sixteen. So we tried to hope that their courage 
 would last as long as the installments must be 
 paid, and that Gus would fit into the rosy dream 
 
GERTRUDE AND GUS 93 
 
 even better than the big, shiny ‘buffett’ fitted 
 into the dining-room. 
 
 Soon after this Gus lost his job. He had, at 
 Gertrude’s urgent request, come home to keep 
 her company one evening. She complained so 
 much of being lonesome that her insistance, 
 combined with his own desires, made him find a 
 nap on the magenta sofa more comfortable than a 
 chair at the firehouse. But awkwardly enough, 
 there was a fire during his absence, so Gus wore 
 his uniform no more, but became an unpictur- 
 esque figure in overalls. Of course, this nettled 
 him, and he was inclined to think it was Ger- 
 trude’s fault. Gertrude was so accustomed, how- 
 ever, to having everything her fault, that she 
 worried little about it. She had more important 
 things to think of just then, for she, in the mean- 
 time, was trying to bring up her three-weeks-old 
 baby on the hospital schedule — she who had 
 never done anything on schedule time in her life. 
 Naturally enough, one set of schedules was all 
 that she could hold in mind at once. The furniture 
 premiums were forgotten and the installment 
 man gave his ultimatum. Inside of six months 
 Gertrude and Gus were in a still smaller flat, 
 very sparsely furnished, and three hundred dol- 
 lars out of pocket —a small sum, after all, to 
 
94 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 have paid for six months of varnish and uphol- 
 stery. 
 
 But a baby and domestic cares were far from 
 enough to slake the thirst of Gertrude’s romantic 
 soul. Gus, whose temper had never been of the 
 best, was finding the steady grind of loading 
 box-cars much less to his taste than playing 
 cards in the engine house with the other firemen. 
 Moreover, a hot August with a fretful baby 
 did not improve Gertrude’s disposition, and she 
 missed the trips to the merry-go-rounds and the 
 ice-cream parlors with which her previous sum- 
 mers had been enlivened. So, when Gus reminded 
 Gertrude, as he often did, that his fallen fortunes 
 were because of her, she, in turn, reminded him 
 that she had had many lovers more wealthy than 
 he, and could have them now if she so much as 
 winked an eye or dropped a handkerchief. As a 
 matter of fact, Gertrude had done neither since her 
 infatuation with her husband. Even six months 
 of life with the grouchy Gus had not changed her 
 love for him. But she had the theory, based on 
 much meditation and consultation with her girl 
 friends, that a husband with an attractive wife 
 like herself should continue his love-making, and 
 that he should with gifts and ‘shows’ express his 
 appreciation of his good luck in winning her. If he 
 
* GERTRUDE AND GUS 95 
 
 declined to do so, he must be made to by jeal- 
 ousy. 
 
 The dramatic device of forging letters to other 
 people has often been made use of in fiction and 
 on the stage, but Gertrude conceived the idea of 
 forging one to herself. It was easy to see why this 
 occurred to her, for her usual dramatic outlet had 
 been recently suppressed. She had been a great 
 patronizer of the circulating library which had a 
 station in the local drug-store. From its shelves 
 she treated herself to volume after volume of the 
 most sugary and impossible fiction, which she 
 read until late at night, and aggravated Gus past 
 endurance by her absorption in it, and her quota- 
 tions from it. One evening she propped herself 
 with pillows on the kitchen floor, to read her 
 latest romance, meaning by this pose, one must 
 conclude, to arouse curiosity in her husband when 
 he came home and found her there. But she in- 
 advertently fell asleep. And when Gus arrived 
 very tired and hungry, there he found her, in the 
 middle of the floor, all the lights ablaze, and too 
 deep in slumber to notice either the arrival of her 
 husband or the hungry protests of her baby from 
 the next room. 
 
 This was too much. ‘Darned foolishness,’ 
 snarled Gus. ‘Using the electricity reading a 
 
96 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 bunch of nonsense.’ So Gus prohibited the perusal 
 of any more books whatever, and Gertrude, thus 
 suddenly cut off from her principal joy, proceeded 
 to write, if she might not read. 
 
 The first fruit of her pen was a most outrageous 
 love-letter from a mythical Charlie Cooms, which 
 she left carelessly on the stove for Gus to find 
 when he came in. Gus found it. The first we 
 knew of this episode was Gertrude calling over 
 the telephone in the hysterical voice which she 
 loved to use — ‘Take me somewhere. Gus is 
 going to kill me if you don’t.’ 
 
 When we next saw Gus (we did not hurry), he 
 was still shaking with wrath, and thrust the letter 
 into our hands. The letter would have been funny 
 if its disconnected anti-climaxes had not thrown 
 such a sad light on Gertrude’s past. With a free 
 hand to frame a lover to her own taste, she could 
 construct nothing but a monstrosity. Charlie 
 Cooms, if he had existed, would have been even 
 more undesirable than Gus. But the handwriting 
 was so plainly that of Gertrude herself, and her 
 leaving it on the stove so obvious, that even Gus 
 was convinced of its authorship. This conviction 
 did not mend matters, however. If he was not 
 now angry at her infidelity, he was even more 
 enraged at her perverseness. A betrayed husband 
 
GERTRUDE AND GUS 97 
 
 has some dignity; one who has been made ridicu- 
 lous has none. Gus scemed to feel that his position 
 as head of the house could be restored only by 
 means of an application of his powerful fist. 
 Gertrude said that he knocked her down, and we 
 not only believed her, but we did not blame him. 
 As Gus himself tersely remarked, ‘If she wants 
 to kid me, she can take what is coming to her.’ 
 Poor Gertrude, it was not the first time that she 
 had been knocked down, nor was it likely to be 
 the last. 
 
 How any one could have the courage deliber- 
 ately to bait the bear-like Gus was more than we 
 could see — but Gertrude was determined to play 
 the heroine in her imaginative drama, and she 
 was equally determined that Gus should play the 
 hero. After all, she was barely seventeen, spend- 
 ing hot days and nights in a little flat with a 
 heavy, fretful baby. The romance in her system 
 was like a violent attack of the measles — it 
 simply had to come out, or turn in and slay its 
 victim. 
 
 The next form of the attack was boarders. In 
 a revulsion of feeling against having been an 
 undutiful wife, Gertrude determined to be wifely 
 to a fault. She would help out the family budget 
 by taking a girl friend and an elderly rclative to 
 
98 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 board, and with the proceeds of the venture she 
 would herself refurnish the flat so bereft of the 
 adornment with which they had started their 
 married life. 
 
 In order to start off well with the boarders, it 
 was necessary to begin the furnishing at once, asa 
 kind of advance investment, and Gertrude found 
 a hitherto unknown joy in shopping by corre- 
 spondence. In their first venture, she and Gus had 
 wandered through the shops buying what they 
 saw. But Gertrude now discovered that no furni- 
 ture in reality is half so dazzling as the description 
 of it in the catalogue, and she was lost in the 
 contemplation of ‘dressy dressers’ and ‘classy 
 davenports,’ as if she had not been caught once in 
 the installment mill. So, although she lived in a 
 city with myriads of house-furnishing establish- 
 ments, she placed a large order in a distant city 
 noted for its ‘merchandising by mail.’ With the 
 rather commonplace articles which appeared in 
 response to her orders, the two boarders and their 
 host started out on a domestic experiment. 
 
 This was Gertrude’s plan. The boarders would 
 pay her and she would pay for the furniture. 
 When the debt was off her hands, she would buy 
 presents for Gus and stylish clothes for the baby 
 and herself. But everything went wrong from the 
 
GERTRUDE AND GUS 99 
 
 very first. The elderly relative promptly lost his 
 job, and could not pay his bill, and the girl friend, 
 who was behind on the payments for her last 
 winter’s fur coat, asked for an extension of time. 
 This shortage in cash naturally affected Gertrude, 
 who in turn asked for an extension on her own bill. 
 But while she had been most good-natured in her 
 response to her boarders, the furniture dealer was 
 far from good-natured to her. If the furniture 
 was removed for the second time, the boarders 
 would have to go too, for there would be no place 
 for them to sleep, nor any dishes for them to eat 
 from. Moreover, if they left now, they would 
 never pay for their back board. Obviously, Gus, 
 instead of getting presents, must pay for the 
 luxury of his house guests. In the meantime, the 
 elderly relative, having so much time on his 
 hands, was using it to flirt with the girl friend, and, 
 as if this were not enough, Gus himself, as a slight 
 compensation for so much trouble and incon- 
 venience, began to join in the flirtation. Gertrude, 
 flushed and unhappy over her steaming dishpan, 
 would hear uproarious echoes from the next room 
 where the two men were vying with each other to 
 entertain the guest. 
 
 ‘Her owing me thirty-five dollars on her 
 board, Gus takes her to a movie and leaves me 
 
100 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 with the baby — the nerve of that!’ sobbed 
 Gertrude. 
 
 The only solution to this tangle, which threat- 
 ened to be not only a love-triangle but a parallelo- 
 gram, was to send back the furniture once more, 
 evict the boarders, and start again, only a few 
 more hundred dollars in debt than they were 
 when they were married. 
 
 What next? Gertrude, having exhausted her 
 dramatic possibilities of the wayward and the 
 dutiful wife, selected as her next rdle that of the 
 hysterical patient. She was seized with frequent 
 attacks, which culminated in a particularly 
 violent outburst of nerves outside of a movie 
 theater. 
 
 The attack was brought on by an argument as 
 to which parent should carry the baby. Both of 
 them firmly and noisily declined to perform this 
 office, until Gertrude, having by a ruse got young 
 Calvin Coolidge into his father’s arms, left him 
 there, and, darting suddenly across the street, 
 she marched home with her nose in the air. It 
 would not have been quite so bad if the way home 
 had not been past the fire-engine house where Gus 
 had been formerly employed, and where his old 
 pals, now seated at leisure in the doorway, were 
 watching the whole affair with great relish. Ger- 
 
GERTRUDE AND GUS 101 
 
 trude refused to cast one glance at these, her one- 
 time dancing partners, or to answer their greet- 
 ings. She flounced past them, her high heels beat- 
 ing a quick tattoo on the pavement, her red cheeks 
 blazing, and her long earrings waving in rhythm 
 to her stride. Gus followed slowly, his face red- 
 dened, not by rouge, but by wrath, gripping the 
 howling baby under one arm. He was too utterly 
 enraged to do aught but glare helplessly at his 
 former colleagues. And although some of them 
 were family men and privately sympathetic, what 
 could they do, under the circumstances, but ex- 
 tend cheerful inquiries for the health of himself 
 and his family, and ask him how he enjoyed mar- 
 ried life? 
 
 If looks could kill, many corpses would have 
 lined the streets that day. Poor Gus! One could 
 hardly blame him for wanting to shake Gertrude 
 until, as he said, ‘her teeth would rattle.’ Even 
 Gertrude had misgivings, after this last episode, 
 lest she had gone too far. She was obliged to think 
 quickly. Gus would soon be at her heels, and this 
 time she was really afraid of him. She thought 
 of the novels she had read, and agreed with Gold- 
 smith, that ‘when lovely woman stoops to folly,’ 
 there gets to be a point where ‘the only way to 
 give repentance to her lover and wring his bosom 
 
102 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 — is todie.’ But even in the face of instant death, 
 Gertrude did not forget her rdle of dramatic 
 heroine. Again a note was hastily penned and 
 placed upon the stove, and as Gus, full of wrath, 
 opened the door, Gertrude faced him with a box 
 in her hand. Before he had a chance to utter what 
 she knew was coming, she pointed tragically to 
 the note, swallowed the contents of the box, and 
 fell screaming to the floor. 
 
 Poor Gus — again outwitted. He looked at the 
 note which read as follows: 
 
 DEAR FRIENDS, I am going to commit suicide, as 
 soon as I finish this note. Gus has ruined my life, I 
 have nothing to live for. 
 
 Sincerely 
 GERTRUDE 
 
 P.S. I shall drink lie. Gus has given it to me. 
 Good-bye, and love to all. Curses on Gus. 
 
 Scrawled upon the margin of the note was an 
 afterthought of maternal sentiment — ‘Please 
 take care of baby’ —for, as Gertrude hastily 
 recalled, no beautiful young mother dies without 
 asking a cruel world to take care of her baby. 
 The picture would not be complete without it. 
 
 Under the circumstances, there was, of course, 
 nothing for Gus to do but to call in a neighbor and 
 a doctor. The neighbor, at Gertrude’s request, 
 
GERTRUDE AND GUS 103 
 
 telephoned to us: ‘Come at once, Gertrude has 
 just been murdered.’ When we arrived, the neigh- 
 bor was administering such remedies as she found 
 recommended by the cookbook, which the doctor 
 later supplemented with a stomach pump. How 
 much poison she really swallowed we never knew. 
 But if the ‘lie’ did not make her feel sick the 
 stomach pump and the cookbook, between them, 
 certainly did. 
 
 She and Gus were a very subdued couple when 
 the affair was finally over, and Gertrude lay white 
 and limp upon the bed. Nevertheless, there was 
 a flicker of triumph in her eye. The little drama 
 had been a success. Gus had been put in the 
 wrong, and her little world was there to witness his 
 discomfiture. The women who had gathered from 
 the adjacent flats took up their cues as if they had 
 rehearsed them. There were many encoutaging 
 little pats given to the invalid, and much mur- 
 muring of ‘dearie’ and ‘girlie,’ whereas nothing 
 fell to Gus’s share but lifted elbows and averted 
 shrugs. There was nothing for him to do but to 
 accept the rdle of the repentant husband, and to 
 behave exactly as Gertrude had intended him to 
 behave when she staged the scene. 
 
 The next day, after it was all over, and we were 
 wondering what to do next, came the following 
 
104 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 note, which seemed to relieve us of any immediate 
 responsibility: 
 
 DEAR FRIENDs: Don’t expect any news of me. Not 
 while I live. If you had not raved like lunatics, I 
 would not have got so mad. I have had enough of you. 
 In fact too much. I don’t think my husband likes you 
 any too well, and I want you to know that there aren’t 
 any things on earth I loathe as much as I loathe you. 
 I am a good wife and mother, so stay away. I never 
 want to see any of you again in my life. 
 
 P.S. I don’t expect an answer. 
 
 So this was the next act! Gertrude’s creative 
 energy was enormous. She had evidently been 
 planning the next installment of her serial drama 
 before she had recovered from the effects of the 
 last. And she had decided that not Gus, but we, 
 should play the villain’s part. If she had cast us 
 for the villain’s r6le we must play it, for no one 
 can be a part of Gertrude’s life without acting in 
 her dramas. But, despite the trouble which she 
 gives us, neither Gus nor we will ever desert her. 
 And if we do not desert her, it will be for the same 
 reason. We all want to see what she will do next. 
 
Vil 
 IRENE AND NICHOLAS 
 
IRENE AND NICHOLAS 
 
 ‘Compensation’ is the term applied to the ten- 
 dency to make up for an organic defect by an 
 extra-nervous effort. Thus, to escape from their 
 crushing sense of physical inferiority becomes for 
 some people the impelling force behind all their 
 most vigorous action. 
 
 The compensating energy which endeavors to 
 make up to them for an organic defect, may even 
 operate so strongly as to make them far above 
 the average in the very skilled activity from which 
 organic weakness might otherwise have debarred 
 them. 
 
VII 
 IRENE AND NICHOLAS 
 
 WHEN I first saw Irene, she puzzled me. She was 
 an extremely pretty girl, with large gray eyes and 
 smooth pink cheeks which required no rouge. 
 She was simple and direct in her answers, and 
 her mental examination indicated an intelligence 
 much above our average type, despite the fact 
 that she had had little education. 
 
 But such tragedy in her face! She answered 
 every question briefly, and without once changing 
 the stoical fixation of her eyes on some distant 
 point out of the window. Her face was too young 
 and smooth for lines, but in some subtle manner 
 her tense mouth and stony eyes had nothing less 
 than anguish written over them. 
 
 I could not fathom her until, as my eye wan- 
 dered over her charming person, it came to an in- 
 voluntary stop — and she saw it. Her sensitive- 
 ness felt my startled glance without looking at 
 me. A slow flush crept over her face and her lips 
 tightened. She continued to stare out of the win- 
 dow, but I looked back at my paper and fiddled 
 with my pen. Irene’s left sleeve was empty. The 
 
108 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 cuff was tucked into her coat pocket, but it was 
 unmistakably a sleeve without an arm. It was 
 only due to the fact that she had a pretty face that 
 drew one’s gaze that I had not noticed it before. 
 
 ‘How long has it been gone?’ I asked. 
 
 ‘Two months.’ 
 
 ‘How did it happen?’ 
 
 ‘Wrecked in a joy-ride. Some fellas got rough 
 and ran us in the ditch, and in three days, they 
 took my arm.’ She almost hissed the last words. 
 Then she turned on me. ‘Is there another girl in 
 the whole world who has lost her arm? I never 
 heard of one.’ And then, ‘They say I’ll get 
 damages, but I don’t want damages. I only want 
 my arm, and they can’t give me that.’ 
 
 In situations like this, words are futile. But as 
 I looked at Irene’s lovely face, I could not keep 
 from saying: ‘Irene, you are so pretty. Girls with 
 ugly faces can’t hide them, but you can hide your 
 arm. An empty sleeve does not show. Most of 
 us cannot get past your face.’ 
 
 It seemed as if she had a right to some spoken 
 recognition of her beauty since her pride had been 
 so cruelly hurt, and for a moment a faint watery 
 gleam of a smile did light through the gloom of 
 her face. She knew that she was pretty and was 
 ready to admit it. But since when have pretty 
 
IRENE AND NICHOLAS 109 
 
 women been more resigned to mutilation than 
 ugly ones? 
 
 Irene shook her head. ‘No one sees my face. 
 Everybody I pass stares at that sleeve. They see 
 nothing else, and I think of nothing else. I 
 suppose I never will,’ she added, and rose. ‘There 
 is nothing you can do, you know. All I want is 
 my arm, and you can’t give it to me.’ 
 
 It is strange how suffering can sharpen not only 
 the nerves, but the intelligence. Irene was only an 
 ignorant girl, with no training, no family, and no 
 fortune. Yet the experience through which she 
 had just passed had brought her so close to the 
 realities of life, and of death, that she had the 
 dignity and the self-possession of a woman of the 
 world. 
 
 Yet, curiously enough, at a suggestion that we 
 go to her room with her to help her get her suit- 
 case, her self-possession left her. She did not want 
 us, and the more we urged, the more excited be- 
 came her refusal. To our inquiries as to how she 
 could come to our boarding-home without some 
 one to carry her bag, and how she could stay 
 anywhere else without money, she burst into 
 hysterical sobbing. 
 
 It was plain enough that there was something 
 in that room which we must not see, and how 
 
110 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 could we fail to guess what it was? No girl is 
 going to shake with sobs as the self-possessed 
 Irene was shaking, unless that mysterious some- 
 thing in the room is a lover. 
 
 Now we were in no mood to grudge consolation 
 to Irene, in whatever guise that consolation 
 might be found. Yet here she was, utterly desti- 
 tute and crippled. She could not start out alone 
 on slippery sidewalks with the sleet driving in her 
 face unless some one helped her. And it was 
 equally plain that, whoever her lover might be, 
 he was not her husband, nor could he help her, 
 or she would not have come to us. It was more 
 likely that there were two waifs instead of one, 
 both wretched and at their wits’ end, with no 
 consolation but each other’s company. Irene’s 
 sobs doubtless meant that she dreaded being 
 snatched by stern moralists from the only treas- 
 ure which she had saved from the shipwreck of 
 her fortunes. 
 
 It was finally arranged that Irene should be 
 motored to the corner of her street and should gO 
 alone to her room to pack her bag, with her one 
 arm, or with the help of whatever arms might 
 lurk in the room. A discreet reticence was main- 
 tained, both by Irene and by us, as to the exist- 
 ence of the other pair of arms. 
 
IRENE AND NICHOLAS IIL 
 
 But at the assurance that no intruder would ac- 
 company her to her room, her sobs quieted down, 
 and she drove silently with us to the corner of the 
 street. After a period of packing which seemed 
 the more lengthy considering the very modest 
 dimensions of her one little bag, Irene came 
 trudging back to the car, her head bowed against 
 the sleet, and her empty sleeve flapping wildly 
 behind her. 
 
 That she would never have come at all if they 
 had had a cent between them, we were morally 
 certain. She was proud and she was stubborn. 
 Moreover, it was plain that she was in love. If 
 her companion had been loyal to a girl with no 
 money, no job, and no arm, it seemed more than 
 likely that he too was in love. Undoubtedly their 
 room rent was unpaid, and they had been asked to 
 move on. Hence Irene’s acquiescence. So much 
 we could guess without asking questions. We 
 felt that after a day or two of quiet, with a hot 
 bath and some good meals, Irene would be ready 
 to talk without being urged, which, indeed, 
 turned out to be the case. 
 
 Nicholas, it seemed, was a truck driver who 
 had-lost his job. But feeling certain that the 
 trucking business was a good one, he had de- 
 cided to go into it on his own account, and he was 
 
112 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 paying for a truck on the installment plan. He 
 had hoped to earn enough by hauling to pay for 
 the machine, but business had not been good, and 
 despite his best efforts it looked as if he would 
 lose the truck, all the money that he had put into 
 it and all means for earning anything else. At 
 this stage of his fortunes, he and Irene had met 
 each other. Both were unhappy, both had been 
 undeservedly unlucky, and both were in the mood 
 to cling to any one who would be kind. Moreover, 
 Irene had a room for which she had paid a month 
 in advance. Nicholas had in the meantime been 
 sleeping in his truck. But the weather had sud- 
 denly turned cold, and even his endurance quailed 
 before the prospect of more nights under its chilly 
 canvas. Moreover, he had probably got to return 
 the truck for lack of money to pay the premiums; 
 so, cold or warm, he must seek another shelter, 
 and Irene had offered hers as long as it lasted. 
 
 It had lasted one month. And now neither of 
 them had a roof, or the price of a cup of coffee and 
 a sandwich. ‘The poor fella,’ said Irene, ‘and me 
 with only one arm. How can I help him? With 
 an arm and a job, I could rent a room, and we’d 
 live real well until he got his truck back. There’s 
 always lots of hauling in the fall if Nick could 
 only get the chance.’ It was plain that there 
 
IRENE AND NICHOLAS Dos 
 
 would be no settling of Irene’s problems that did 
 not include a settling of Nick’s, and we promised 
 to start negotiations for his truck and for her new 
 arm, and without delay. 
 
 The first interview with the owner of the 
 truck was satisfactory, but puzzling. The man in 
 charge of the installment service was most sym- 
 pathetic, and he agreed to give Nick the time he 
 needed to make his payments. 
 
 ‘Tt’s hard for a young fella with a family, these 
 days,’ said the kindly Irishman. ‘I’ve been 
 where I needed a little consideration myself.’ 
 
 So Nick had a family, did he? The question 
 remained: Was Irene his family, or did he have 
 another one? Since Irene showed no disposition 
 to enlighten us, and since it is one of the many 
 disadvantages of being poor that one’s private 
 affairs must be pried into, there seemed to be no 
 alternative but to ask her. This we did as gently 
 as possible. Was she, or was she not, married to 
 Nicholas? If not, did she intend to be? Did he 
 have any other wife who would prevent it? 
 
 Irene was reticent by nature, and her mis- 
 fortunes had made her more so. It was not easy 
 for her to answer questions, and probably she 
 would have refused to do so on her own account. 
 But Nicholas stood a much better chance with 
 
114° OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 us to back him than he did without us, and she 
 knew it. For his sake she admitted that she was 
 ‘sort of’ married to him. At least, neither of 
 them was married to any one else, and she was 
 his common-law wife. But why not his legal wife _ 
 if there had been nothing to prevent it? 
 
 Here it became very hard to explain, for Irene 
 was proud and she was sensitive. She was very 
 much in love, and she was gifted with a sense of 
 the ridiculous. But here it was! When Nicholas 
 came to live under Irene’s roof, they decided that 
 they must be married at once. So the license was 
 procured, and while Irene, who was still rather 
 clumsy with her toilette, was arranging her 
 slight attempt at wedding finery, Nicholas had 
 gone for a look at his truck. In the course of his 
 inspection he had sat on a piece of scaffolding, 
 and as he jumped off he was horrified by the 
 dreadful sound of tearing cloth. A nail had caught 
 in the seat of his trousers, and in his impatience 
 to return to Irene his upward bound had been 
 so quick that the entire seat had been torn off in 
 one great three-cornered gash, before he realized 
 that he was caught. There it hung, torn past re- 
 demption — and the priest waiting for them in 
 the church. Fortunately, Irene’s room was near 
 by, but, as she said with bitter self-deprecation, 
 
IRENE AND NICHOLAS 115 
 
 ‘What could a one-armed girl do for him? Could 
 I darn it?’ Their only recourse was to go to the 
 woman who ran the rooming-house and ask her 
 to sew him up. She was good-natured, but she 
 was busy, and the morning was gone before she 
 had found time to sew the edges together. 
 
 Moreover, although the patch enabled him to 
 wear the trousers on his truck, how could he get 
 married in them? ‘We couldn’t make her hurry 
 so that we could get to the priest, for we had to 
 tell her that we were already married, or she would 
 not have let Nick in my room. We couldn’t tell 
 her that it was his only suit, or she would have 
 known that we were broke, and been afraid of her 
 rent. She might have turned us out, and you 
 couldn’t have blamed the poor woman if she had,’ 
 added Irene. ‘She needed all the money she could 
 get. She had children, and her husband was al- 
 ways drunk on raisin-jack. She fixed Nick up as 
 well as she could, but she wasn’t much of a tailor; 
 and Gosh, how he looked!’ Irene almost smiled 
 as she contemplated her memory. Then she 
 stopped talking. 
 
 That seemed to be the end of the story so far as 
 Irene was concerned, but we ventured another 
 faint question. ‘Couldn’t you have got married 
 even if Nick did have a queer pair of trousers? 
 
116 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Wasn’t the wedding more important than the 
 looks of the suit?’ 
 
 But here she turned on us. ‘ No, it wasn’t more 
 important,’ she snapped. ‘Don’t you suppose 
 that we wanted to be married decent like any one 
 else? What would we have looked like — a bride 
 with no arm, and_a groom with nothing but 
 patches on his back? How would we look at the 
 altar, kneeling there with an empty sleeve where 
 my wedding hand ought to be, and rags sewed in 
 black thread all over the seat of those gray pants, 
 and him with only one short coat that wouldn’t 
 hide an inch? Us, looking as we do now — why, 
 they laugh at us when they come up behind. 
 When they see my sleeve, they stop laughing, but 
 does that make it any better?’ 
 
 Irene’s voice was getting higher and higher, 
 but we could not stop her. The suppressed agony 
 of the past few weeks was finding expression all 
 at once, and nothing we could say would help. 
 It was better to leave her alone until she had re- 
 lieved her heart and could see life reasonably 
 again. 
 
 ‘Maybe you think that a poor girl like me, who 
 has made her mistakes, ain’t got no pride,’ she 
 said, ‘but I have. Nick is as good as any man, 
 and not every man would marry a girl like me. 
 
IRENE AND NICHOLAS EZ 
 
 But we wanted to be married decent, and Nick 
 felt so about those pants — you know how men 
 are, they mind those things worse than women — 
 that I wouldn’t make him kneel at the front of 
 the church and get laughed at. The poor fella, he 
 sat with his head in his hands, and he said, ‘‘ Irene, 
 I can’t support you, and I can’t buy you a wed- 
 ding ring, and I can’t even marry you without 
 looking like a scarecrow. I knew I wasn’t much 
 of a man,” he said, ‘‘but I’ve never been before 
 where the very dogs barked at me.” That’s what 
 he said, and what could I say? 
 
 ‘If he was a scarecrow, what was I? Even a 
 scarecrow has two arms. And if he was a poor 
 man, what can a poor man do with a wife who 
 can’t even sew a patch on his pants? I said to 
 him, “Nick, you needn’t ever marry me till we 
 can do it right. But you can have my roof as long 
 as I have one, married or not’? — and he can. I 
 don’t care what you say, or the priest says, or any 
 one says. Nick’s my man, and if any one blames 
 him for anything, I’ll run off and no one will find 
 me unless it’s in the morgue.’ 
 
 Needless to say, Irene was in a storm of sobs 
 by this time. She had braced herself for a de- 
 nunciation of her moral standards, and the longer 
 it seemed to delay, the more hysterical she 
 
118 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 got. ‘Scold me and get it over with,’ she sobbed. 
 
 But Irene never got her scolding. It was 
 merely put up to her that if she would like a 
 wedding, and if Nick would like a good suit to be 
 married in, and if she would like to be taught one- 
 armed cookery and other domestic arts, it was all 
 hers for the asking.. She was a sensible girl, and 
 Nick turned out to be the desirable young man 
 we had already made up our minds that he was. 
 So they were married by the priest, Nick looking 
 very happy in his new suit, and Irene very pretty, 
 as she always did. 
 
 They were soon in their two-room flat, where 
 Nick, after his day’s trucking was over, helped 
 Irene with the supper dishes by playing to her on 
 the accordion while she washed them. She is 
 getting more expert at her housekeeping every 
 day. But, curiously enough, the handicraft at 
 which she excels is sewing. She outdoes herself 
 in every contrivance for needlework in spite of her 
 handicap. Ostensibly she is hemming table linen 
 for herself and darning socks. But emotionally, 
 every stitch is but a substitute for the stitches she 
 was not able to put into Nick’s patch on her wed- 
 ding morning. Irene has a vein of obstinacy in 
 her, and she has her standards. Those hours of 
 suppressed fury over her helplessness bit into her 
 
IRENE AND NICHOLAS II9 
 
 very soul. Every needle thrust relieves that fury 
 and restores her self-respect. 
 
 When the flat is fully furnished and she is less 
 awkward with her new arm, she even plans to 
 help Nick make his final payments on the truck 
 with the money which she earns at dressmaking. 
 

 
 ite Pa ER A AN had At ibaa» atv 
 ? eee tA any “a1 i Ni yu \ i Bat . NEY ’ i f rs ' : } 
 : Sey a aT i i j f : Ay Rk See a 
 } " rf Ly 7 Q : L . T¥ _ 
 Pes LA ¢ vw ni he ke Poy yearly i Wad si Pat a bir) 
 hy b's Me OT ant he v3 ‘ bl aie errs is Mey ert) Va: why 
 ie sb. ‘ye : “t ‘hae j en) CAP OL oh) _ hel bas : “ > 
 (: : aL A ‘ t : : \ _"" ) Ne, hes any A v4 ; +4 et : “ent 
 ” ? ‘, ‘ > iw . = 4 } 
 i "1 - ; 4 ; moa 7 \ fis . ' i ; (aM i] a 
 ‘ ; ; — 
 | MG ia “ ' i ‘ , , ‘ 
 | AL ; “e ' .* 4 7 
 ‘i ; vi afi Ni Tt 
 We, J ¢ 1 ' 
 tie i yi) : ’ . . 
 ye al ut ‘ i ’ 
 a } i ja! i! a ] y } J 
 ¢ } 4h ’ 
 bri “4 
 Brats vrs 
 i \ . mT) ae ’ ’ 
 7 
 if } i ‘ 
 | ee f nl iq y t 
 i MA i > 
 Nf rs 
 nh ‘ ‘ uy 
 LJ i 
 J %, i 'y = 
 | ii ed | ‘ 
 i ! 
 ] f 
 4 
 : 
 ' 
 > ij : 
 . ch 
 i 
 t j ~~ 1 i 
 7 ! 
 ( ? 
 f s 
 . my 
 , 
 J; 
 ; 
 F ‘ 
 4 
 ’ 
 ; od 1 
 \ 
 va) { s ' 
 j f 
 ‘ 
 ' 
 i 
 ~t 
 é I 1 
 ¢ t t ’ 
 ® P | ‘ 
 <? 
 ‘ \ ‘ | i ' \ i 
 ° ' 
 ' 
 Tr ’ 
 ‘ i 
 i ’ 
 ‘ j 4 
 . | F ( 4 ’ Hi, 
 : i ’ Ck i 
 fs j ! yy hn a it / 
 uy yi ‘ f } ; AOU iid" 
 j f ‘ , ‘ uA Wty tg BP eS iG 
 ‘ ' eas | 4 I A. Mant j Vial #4: hs 
 t ' J 4 ’ . j ot a, 
 Alene | si a ace Liglt CALI a ap a a 
 bad. cE Lit Aly ae . 7 wud 
 ‘ Ce ‘) yank re ty ¥O4 (anit uf re fe ae > 
 J ‘ PF * A dT A ai / 7 } Pu pi 
 Le % bea | ¢ al ae) y h oe Pe r Ah a fy Pi ie P 4 ra oe) i f 4 
 ‘sw f 9 ay yf , iA Rn ee pet wi ; 
 j ¥ : ‘a > 
 Me, .e > heat f Wag ws an a) mc >) ae F 
 
 
 
VIII 
 LOs73 
 
1.00738 
 
 Standard mental examinations express their re- 
 sults in terms of the intelligence quotient, which is 
 secured by dividing the actual age into the mental 
 age. From 1.10 to .go comprises the quotients 
 of those able to do good average mental work. 
 From .90 to .80, those who are less gifted, but still 
 normal. From .7o down are the grades of dullness 
 through feeble-mindedness into imbecility. 
 
 1.Q. .73, therefore, indicates a grade of un- 
 developed intelligence, barely escaping feeble- 
 mindedness, and from which little rational judg- 
 ment can be expected. The possessor of this I.Q. 
 compelled to earn an adult living. but with de- 
 sires at conflict with his ability, becomes a social 
 burden, unless gifted with more than the average 
 thrift, perseverance, and willingness to learn — 
 which, without careful training, he is hardly 
 likely to have. 
 
Vill 
 1.Q. .73 
 
 EXPERIENCE with Matilda has taught us one 
 lesson, which is this: If you are a poor young girl, 
 not endowed with fortune, with beauty, with 
 good conduct, nor with intelligence — do not ask 
 for any of these gifts, but for one boon, and that 
 alone — a good disposition. Against the reef of a 
 good disposition, provided it is good enough, the 
 tides of accident and misadventure, of criticism, 
 and even of good advice, beat in vain. They hurl 
 themselves against it only to fall back helpless in 
 a fury of spray and froth. But the good disposi- 
 tion dries quickly in the sunshine and remains as 
 unmoved and unmovable as before. 
 
 It is certainly no laughing matter to have three 
 teaspoons, two diamond rings, one pair of silk 
 bloomers, and a new ten-dollar-bill found on the 
 person of one to whom they do not rightly belong. 
 It is hardly a matter even to smile about, but 
 Matilda was smiling in her sweetest and most 
 composed manner. She had been asked the usual 
 foolish question — ‘Why did you take them?’ — 
 and had made the answer that she made to most 
 
124 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 questions, namely, that she did not know. Why 
 does any one want diamonds, silver teaspoons, 
 and silk bloomers? Why did the woman who 
 owned them want to keep them? And why did 
 she become so unbecomingly red in the face when 
 deprived of them by Matilda? Presumably they 
 both wanted them for the same reason. Matilda 
 snatched them. Her employer snatched them 
 back. Matilda understood her thoroughly, and 
 bore her no grudge for doing what she would 
 have done herself if she got the chance. Why 
 could not this understanding be mutual? Matil- 
 da’s good-nature was imperturbable. And her 
 desire for attractive knickknacks which she could 
 not afford was unquenchable. The present dif- 
 ficulty was that she had an extraordinary number 
 of other pretty clothes and ornaments which her 
 employer grudgingly admitted had not been 
 borrowed from her wardrobe, and yet which, by 
 no possible stretching of Matilda’s weekly wages, 
 could she have afforded. It was a dismal fact; 
 that those in charge of her affairs had been able 
 to make a lightning calculation of her property 
 to know exactly how much of it she could not 
 have paid for, and unhesitatingly they had be- 
 lieved the worst. It takes an excellent temper to 
 face the charges which had rolled up against 
 
AO) age: 125 
 
 Matilda, but, fortunately for her, she could not be 
 ruffled. To wear a cotton apron with an ink spot 
 on it instead of the georgette dress, velvet coat, 
 flower hat, rhinestone buckles, satin scarf, French 
 gloves, sunburn chiffon hose, cut-work slippers, 
 and swagger stick, in which she felt more at home, 
 did cause her some concern. But the spots which 
 all these irritable and dowdy ladies were casting 
 on her reputation elicited only the soothing smile 
 which one gives to cranky babies. 
 
 The story that Matilda finally told, after every 
 incoherent excuse which her amiable but not 
 very nimble wits could fabricate, was that the 
 elderly Mr. Stugel, the grandfather of four, the 
 retired wholesale grocer, the impeccable owner of 
 a neat house and garden which she had overlooked 
 from her adjacent kitchen, had taken pity on her 
 penniless state, and had given her an outfit of 
 clothes and general furnishings. Only what he 
 had omitted to give had she stolen from her 
 employer. 
 
 ‘He saw me crying in my kitchen one night be- 
 cause they were having a dance in the front 
 room,’ she finally confessed, ‘and I wasn’t in- 
 vited. We danced in the kitchen, and he said 
 he’d give me some clothes if I’d stop crying — so 
 I did.’ 
 
126 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘That old man danced with you in the kitchen? 
 Matilda, why will you tell such lies?’ 
 
 Matilda giggled slightly at the recollection. 
 ‘He did. I’m telling ya. You ask him.’ 
 _ And so there was nothing to do but to ask Mr. 
 Stugel to call, and answer to the charge of conduct 
 so indiscreet in one of his ripe years. Mr. Stugel 
 appeared promptly in response to our invitation. 
 He had retired from business, had no duties, un- 
 limited leisure, and was grateful for any little 
 episode that would give him some novel way to 
 pass his time. He was a spruce little man, who 
 insisted that he was sixty-nine, though it was 
 hard to believe. He was dressed in a dapper suit 
 with a necktie that matched his socks, and had 
 his bald spot in the front concealed by hair care- 
 fully brushed from the rear. He entered quickly, 
 mopped his face, and looked like a small boy 
 caught stealing jam. 
 
 ‘She’s right. She’s right. Darned softy. Al 
 ways have been. Can’t bear to see them cry.’ 
 
 ‘What’s all this about dancing in the kitchen?’ 
 
 Mr. Stugel’s face assumed the same shame- 
 facedly amused expression that had been on 
 Matilda’s. ‘She’s right. There’s where we 
 danced. No other place to do it. Going to the 
 garage, heard the dance music. Looked in. Saw 
 
LO73 127 
 
 them dancing. Heard crying in the kitchen. 
 Looked in. Saw Tilly crying. Can’t bear to see 
 girls cry. Went in. Said we’d dance too. Could 
 hear the music as well as in the front. She said 
 she couldn’t enjoy dancing without clothes. 
 Said I’d get her some. Damned soft head. Al- 
 ways was’; and he mopped his brow again. 
 
 ‘But Matilda has so many things — five hun- 
 dred dollars’ worth at least. Do you mean to say 
 that you gave all that money to her because you 
 saw her crying?’ 
 
 ‘Yes, I did. Just that soft. But not all at once. 
 I’m an anomaly,’ he added, suddenly looking up 
 as if that explained everything. ‘I’m going on 
 seventy, but I don’t feel it. Can’t keep quiet. 
 Like to bum. Play with my grandchildren, but 
 they go to bed. My wife sits and sews. Dozes in 
 her chair. Children go out. I can’t sit still. Feel 
 twenty-one. I’m an anomaly. Got in the habit of 
 dropping in the kitchen to see Tilly. She’s the 
 same way. Likes to bum. So I said I'd take her 
 out. But she hadn’t any clothes. Had to get her 
 some. Little rascal bought everything in sight. 
 Stopped in front of a jewelry store. Wouldn’t 
 budge till I got her that watch. Said she’d stick 
 there till she dropped. Both got to laughing. 
 Couldn’t stop. Looked like a couple of fools. 
 
128 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Bought the watch. Same trick with that velvet 
 coat. Tried them all on. Made me try one on. 
 Laughed till I was sick. Got the coat. Know she 
 makes a fool of me — but pay money to buy 
 tickets to a good laugh. Might as well laugh at 
 Tilly.’ 
 
 After many arguments and a drooping coun- 
 tenance, Mr. Stugel agreed to the dangers of 
 getting Matilda used to the spending of so much 
 more money than she could ever earn. 
 
 ‘I don’t want to spend it on her. Damned ex- 
 pensive. But the little monkey makes me laugh 
 or makes me cry. Can’t stand either. Old softy. 
 All right if I don’t see her. All off if I do. Have 
 a bite?’ —and suddenly out of his coat-tails 
 appeared a large box of fancy bonbons. ‘Take a 
 piece. Aw — do. Got to spend my money some- 
 how. If I can’t spend it on Tilly, got to spend it 
 on you. Only my joke. No offense. Just to show 
 there’s no hard feeling.’ 
 
 Surely it was hard on any organization to be up 
 against two such hopelessly good dispositions. 
 One might argue, one might scold. One might 
 threaten, and one might even arrest. The coals of 
 fire came back in the shape of smiles and boxes of 
 candy. What defense against such weapons? 
 
 It became necessary to make a call upon Ma- 
 
Ler s7e8 129 
 
 tilda in her next place of employment, which was 
 in a house as far as possible from the Stugel 
 residence. Down the road was parked a car 
 which looked curiously familiar, and, as we turned 
 into the drive, the arm of our elderly ‘anomaly’ 
 beckoned to us from the shrubbery. He was not . 
 in the least disconcerted to see us. On the con- 
 trary. he seemed to feel that none but ourselves 
 were in a position to appreciate what we were 
 about to see. The driveway was torn up and a 
 sewer was being laid by a gang of stalwart 
 Italian laborers. But they were not at this mo- 
 ment laying the sewer. Far from it. To a man, 
 they were turned laughing toward the drawing- 
 room, whose windows stood open, and from 
 which issued, in a nasal but sprightly voice, the 
 ‘Wabash Blues.’ The melody was very much off 
 key, and the accompaniment defies description. 
 But the tones were recognizable as the gay voice 
 of Matilda — of all people to be singing about 
 blues, a malady from which she had never suf- 
 fered. When, despite frantic gesticulations from 
 Mr. Stugel, we edged around to get the view 
 which the sewer gang was getting, we saw Matilda 
 in a neat apron seated by the piano which she had 
 pushed to the window. There she was singing 
 lustily, with the added touch of a silk hat belong- 
 
130 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ing to the owner of the house perched jauntily 
 over one ear. It would be expecting too much of 
 human nature in the persons of pleasure-loving 
 Italians to suppose that they would continue to 
 dig sewers with Matilda in a silk hat trying to 
 amuse them. 
 
 In our ear was the excited voice of Mr. Stugel: 
 ‘Regular chimpanzee, ain’t she? Ever see the 
 beat? Folks gone for the day. Old Johnson’s 
 hat. Seen him in it many a time. Takes Tilly to 
 see what can be done with a hat. Great idea of 
 costume. Real comedian, that girl. Earn a lot of 
 money if she had any sense. Not a scrap’ — and 
 he tapped his head with a sigh. 
 
 By this time the flutter in her audience had 
 made Matilda turn around. She saw the addition 
 to her listeners, and she rushed out to greet us. 
 Was she disturbed? Not at all. It took more than 
 that to disturb Matilda. She asked us all in, in- 
 cluding Mr. Stugel. 
 
 ‘Dropped around to return your shoes,’ he 
 said. ‘Left them at the cobbler’s. Ought to save 
 your money. You don’t need new ones. These 
 are mended. They’re all right.’ He had her 
 mended shoes with him, to be sure, but his excuses 
 were rather vague, and he did not dare to linger 
 behind with Tilly when we left, although it was 
 
LOM 131 
 
 nothing less than cruelty to make him come. We 
 were so much duller company. ‘Give you a lift 
 back. Just to show you bear no grudge,’ he 
 insisted. ‘Yes, I did take Tilly to a show — 
 damned little monkey. Excuse my French. 
 Didn’t she have three girls and their fellows meet 
 us afterwards, and didn’t I have to feed the whole 
 crowd — oysters, ginger ale, everything? Such 
 appetites — starved for a week getting ready for 
 that feed, I’ll say. Set me back forty bones. 
 But I says to myself — I’ve paid more than that 
 for my wife’s parties, dull as ditchwater, stiff as 
 a poker. Why grudge it to a bunch o’ kids? 
 Laughed my head off. Ought to calm down. 
 Too old to laugh so hard. Sure. Come on. No 
 hard feeling. Come now. Don’t be hard on the 
 old boy.’ 
 
 It was soon after this that Matilda acquired a 
 young man. He was, of all moths to fly into the 
 flame of Matilda’s expensive tastes, a Scotchman. 
 It seems that Matilda on her evening out had 
 wandered to a dance-hall, and gazed with yearn- 
 ing at the floor to which she had not enough 
 money to buy a ticket. However, lack of money 
 seldom hampered Matilda, and she sidled sociably 
 up to ashy blond young man who was also gazing 
 longingly at the dancers, but not because he had 
 
132, OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 no money. He made a point of having that. He 
 had no girl, and Matilda smilingly offered her 
 services as partner. But Andy could not dance. 
 Matilda would teach him. So, not knowing how 
 he got there, Andy was being shoved through 
 foxtrot after foxtrot, dime after dime went into 
 the ticket box, and, to top all, more dimes were 
 spent in getting his dancing teacher home by 
 trolley, for he came to enough, steadfastly to 
 refuse to be blandished into a taxi. By the 
 curious attraction of opposites, Andy continued 
 to be fascinated by the girl who could force him to 
 spend his money, and Matilda admired pro- 
 digiously the solid virtues of the young Scotch- 
 man, his dazzling stories of the engines which he 
 manipulated, and his general air of respectability, 
 so foreign to the social atmosphere in which she 
 had been brought up. 
 
 We warned them both. We told Andy of Ma- 
 tilda’s insatiable thirst for expensive adornment, 
 and that the very chic appearance which he had 
 admired in the dance-hall was something he 
 would never want to pay for. In vain we pointed 
 out to them their differences in religion, their 
 ignorance of each other’s ways and traditions, and 
 their temperaments, like the poles asunder. Of 
 course, Matilda had not the faintest notion of 
 
O73 a 133 
 
 what we were talking. But, although Andy had, 
 he was in love, and that was an end of it. 
 
 Meanwhile, old Mr. Stugel was in a fret over 
 the whole affair. He tried to convince us and him- 
 self that he was not jealous, but he hated to have 
 his nose broken, none the less. 
 
 He besieged us, his only confidantes. ‘Little 
 monkey — teases me to give her a new dress. 
 You know me. Try to keep out of her way. She 
 comes up behind me on the street. Takes me to a 
 store window. Money walks out of my pocket. 
 Says she wants me to take her and a girl friend to 
 a show. Get there — and who is her girl friend? 
 That fool Andy. Too tight to buy his own tickets. 
 Have to be the third. Tilly sits between us, and, 
 by gum, she flirts with both! You think Andy is 
 a little tin god on wheels. I see that. But I 
 shan’t buy dresses for his wife. She’s set me back 
 so much I’m ashamed of it. Let him pay her 
 bills. Let her try to squeeze blood from that 
 turnip if she can.’ 
 
 Poor Andy tried his best to stem the tide of 
 Matilda’s purchases. He argued. We argued. 
 Even old Mr. Stugel, in his disgust over Andy, 
 whom he considered a great bore, made it very 
 plain to Matilda that she had got to liveon Andy’s 
 wages. No presents from him to a married 
 
134 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 woman. Matilda merely smiled on, and by hook 
 or crook, which is merely a figure of speech (for 
 as far as we know she was not crooked in her 
 earnings), she managed to have the latest which 
 the shops afforded. Once it was by means of a 
 projected trip to New York. ‘Teased me out of a 
 ticket — cashed it-in, and started installments on 
 a moleskin coat,’ was Mr. Stugel’s excuse. Next 
 she developed serious lung trouble, and Mr. 
 Stugel, all anxiety, provided her with money for 
 treatments which she prudently turned in toward 
 her trousseau, coughing only for his benefit when 
 she wanted a payment. In vain these devices 
 were exposed in her presence, and in the presence 
 of the old man. In vain they were explained to 
 Andy. Matilda said nothing. What she thought 
 was, ‘If he likes to spend his money, let him.’ 
 Mr. Stugel’s excuse was, ‘I’m the same old simp. 
 Thought she looked so pale, I believed her this 
 time. Just left her rouge off to give me a scare. 
 She’s been showing me how she learned that 
 cough. You’d die laughing at the little devil.’ 
 As for Andy, he had schemes for training her, and 
 unbounded faith in his ability to handle women. 
 The poor moth was too singed to see or listen to 
 anything but his flame. What were we against a 
 siren? 
 
LON73 135 
 
 In the meantime Matilda had given up her 
 housework, which had become most distasteful to 
 her, and had taken up a beauty course at Mr. 
 Stugel’s expense. She seemed to be unable to 
 learn the finer points of this art, however, and she 
 came in one day, in a new spring costume, armed 
 with a box of perfumes. This was to be an invest- 
 ment with great returns. The scheme, as clearly 
 as she could outline it, was to pay an installment 
 on the case of perfumes (charged to Mr. Stugel for 
 five dollars) and send one half of what she made to 
 Chicago. She was sure that she could find the 
 address of the firm to which she was to send this 
 commission when she looked through her things. 
 But it was temporarily lost. 
 
 ‘Swellest business deal I ever heard of,’ 
 chuckled Mr. Stugel when he was summoned and 
 remonstrated with for this new venture. ‘Never 
 got more fun out of five dollars. Tilly runs around 
 with her little box. Can’t sell a bottle. Uses most 
 of it up on herself. If those Chicago guys ever 
 get a cent out of Tilly, they deserve a leather 
 medal.’ He was irrepressible. The spectacle of 
 Matilda and her perfumes tickled him so much 
 that our refusal to accept another box of candy 
 could not dampen his spirits. ‘Nice candy. 
 Sorry you don’t like it. Give it to some kids. 
 
136 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Half her sales to those guys? For every half a 
 cent they get out of Tilly, she’ll get a dollar anda 
 half out of them. Sells a bottle and spills three 
 on herself. If they get many agents like Tilly, 
 they can retire from business pretty soon, and 
 it'll be to the poorhouse. Tilly and her little 
 box!’ — he threw .back his head and positively 
 cackled with mirth. 
 
 Something had to be done with such an invet- 
 erate promoter of extravagance and bad habits, 
 but what could we do? Matilda and her friends 
 were all acting within the law. After her one 
 venture into larceny, a mere suggestion that she 
 would be obliged to steal again had always 
 brought her elderly friend to terms. And he cer- 
 tainly had as good a right to throw his money away 
 as any one else. We tried pathos. We sketched 
 the dire future of Tilly, running Andy into hope- 
 less debt, and herself into a situation where the 
 frying-pan and the fire would be equally hot. Mr. 
 Stugel, always of a sentimental turn, sighed 
 heavily. He mopped his brow, and sighed again. 
 ‘You're right,’ he moaned. ‘ You ladies are always 
 right. I always tell Tilly that you're right, but 
 I’m a softy and she knows it. If I don’t play 
 round with Tilly, what shall I do? I’m too active 
 to sit still.’ And he looked up helplessly like a 
 child whose toy has been snatched away. 
 
1.Q. .73 137 
 
 It was too exasperating if Mr. Stugel was to be 
 added to our list of children needing recreation, 
 and with some petulance in our voice we answered, 
 ‘Why spoil Tilly? If you’re so active, why not 
 practice standing on your head?’ 
 
 ‘Don’t need practice,’ retorted he, and, without 
 another word, our elderly anomaly darted to the 
 middle of the room, placed a book on the floor, 
 leaned over, and stood steadily erect upon his 
 head, his face getting redder and redder, and the 
 nickels and dimes rattling from his upturned 
 pockets and rolling under the table. 
 
 We would have let him stay there until he 
 dropped, except that we knew that he had meant 
 this last trick to finish us, and so ludicrous was 
 his appearance that we were afraid that it would 
 have the same softening effect on us that Tilly’s 
 tricks did on him. 
 
 ‘Get up —or down,’ we commanded sternly, 
 and he reversed himself at once mopping his face 
 with the comment: ‘Often do it for Tilly. Wife 
 won’t let me do it for my grandchildren. Afraid 
 I'll get apoplexy. Got to die somehow. As good 
 away asany. Tilly likes it, soshe can clean up on 
 the nickels. Makes me balance a few bills on the 
 edge. If they fall out, she gets them. If they 
 don’t, gets them anyhow. Ever hear of Stugel’s 
 
138 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 gun?’ he asked, panting a trifle, but otherwise 
 unruffled by his exertion. “Big affair. Worked by 
 a spring. Put a man inside. Shoot him into a net. 
 Circuses used it at one time. Made a great hit. 
 Stugel was my uncle. He invented it. Tried it on 
 our farm. Shot me into a haystack many a time. 
 Thought of going into the circus myself. Was a 
 good tumbler in a small way. Well — Well’ — he 
 sighed — ‘those were the days. Getting old, but 
 I’d enjoy that gun as much as ever. Yes, yes, 
 those were the days,’ he went on dreamily. Then 
 he bounced up — ‘Gotta go. Keep Tilly out of 
 my sight, or I’ll be the same old fool. Never mind 
 the change. Let the woman who cleans up have 
 it. Tilly’ll get it if she don’t’ — and he went 
 out leaving us in a more hopeless state than 
 we had ever been before as regards Matilda’s 
 affairs. 
 
 By what turn of the wheel had Fortune brought 
 such an aged Harlequin and such a scatter- 
 brained Columbine together? And must the be- 
 witched Scotchman be ground between them, as 
 between the upper and nether millstone? Ap- 
 parently that was to be his destiny. We could not 
 go on protecting him forever. We argued again 
 faint-heartedly with all of them, but as usual they 
 had the endurance to wear us down. Moreover, 
 
L.OLn73 139 
 
 whereas our dispositions began to show some 
 signs of wear, and Andy’s stubbornness occasion- 
 ally got on edge, Matilda and Mr. Stugel were as 
 unassailable as summer clouds. Nothing touched 
 them. Nothing could hurt them, and nothing, 
 apparently, could stop them. 
 
 We were to leave the city soon afterward for 
 our vacation. There was a hot spell, which had 
 driven us with all the world into the parks, where 
 whole families, with their collars and their shoes 
 off, lay under the trees or dabbled in the foun- 
 tains. The cold-drink man did a thriving business, 
 and a merry-go-round, with its wheezing brass 
 piano, was turning gayly in the midst of the green. 
 As we sauntered past, our eyes rested on Andy, 
 gazing sourly into the whirling throng. We did 
 not want to accost him. We, too, were wilted by 
 the heat, and we did not feel equal to discussing 
 him and his fortunes, with the thermometer at 
 89 at 9 p.M. As we turned softly behind him to 
 avoid his gaze, we glanced in the direction where 
 his eyes were fixed. They were riveted upon a 
 wooden camel in the merry-go-round, which had 
 been so arranged that, as the riders rotated, it 
 took on at the same time an up-and-down, a 
 sidewise, and a forward motion, simulating very 
 cleverly a ship of the desert well under the influ- 
 
 % 
 
140 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ence of liquor. On the camel sat Mr. Stugel, red of 
 face, with his straw hat resting on his collar. 
 From his open mouth burst spasmodic shouts of 
 laughter so loud and gay that every spectator, 
 but Andy, was laughing with him. On a neighbor- 
 ing hobby-horse of slightly more conservative 
 gyrations sat Matilda. Her hair was streaming, 
 her cut-work slippers stuck out on either side, and 
 her hands waved a greeting to the thrifty Andy 
 every time she passed. We took in the situation at 
 a glance. Andy had spent all the dimes he cared 
 to, and perhaps had taken as many rides at Mr. 
 Stugel’s expense as he thought proper. He was 
 therefore ready for less expensive entertainment. 
 But for Mr. Stugel and Matilda, the evening had 
 only just begun, and poor Andy could think of 
 nothing better to do than to stand and glare at 
 both of them. We tiptoed warily into the throng. 
 We were not equal to the crisis. Let them settle 
 it themselves. We were glad that vacation was at 
 hand, and that we could escape, leaving them to 
 whatever midsummer madness might attack 
 them next. 
 
 Of course, the madness which attacked them 
 was a hasty marriage. What other outcome was 
 possible but for Andy to ask his Matilda to share 
 his home, and for Matilda to accept his offer with 
 
EOF 72 I4I 
 
 alacrity? And what other outcome was possible 
 for a wife, who could not master the rudiments of 
 arithmetic, nor see the connection between 
 arithmetic and merchandise even if she had, but 
 to invest gayly in luxuries which Andy could not 
 possibly afford and which plunged him quickly, 
 remorselessly, and hopelessly in debt? And when 
 the installment clerk, and the rent collector, and 
 the bill-collecting agent all called at once, it was 
 natural for a thrifty man to lose his temper and to 
 give his wife (in the course of time) a kick as well 
 as a scolding. And it was natural for his wife to 
 cry, and tell him that he was cross. And when this 
 had happened often enough, and Andy found 
 himself powerless to explain what Matilda had no 
 capacity to understand, it was natural for him to 
 abandon the earning of an inadequate living and 
 to run away. It was natural for Matilda, thor- 
 oughly sick of working for no wages, and of 
 listening to tiresome and incomprehensible ex- 
 hortations, to try larceny again, and to run away 
 in another direction. As for Mr. Stugel, training 
 Matilda in extravagance was one thing when she 
 was free to play the fool, and quite another when 
 she was not. So, after a few applications for a 
 loan, one sight of Andy or his wife was enough to 
 send the old man scuttling toward any point of 
 
142 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 the compass where he could feel sure of meeting 
 neither of them. 
 
 Of course, all this might have been avoided if 
 Matilda could have grasped the arithmetical 
 principles of addition and subtraction, or the 
 geometrical axiom that the whole is no greater 
 than its parts, or even Poor Richard’s maxim 
 that ‘Honesty is the best Policy.’ But she could 
 not. If she had been blind, she could not see the 
 railroad crossing, and if she had been deaf, she 
 could not hear the engine whistle. As it was, she 
 was merely dull. She could not understand bills, 
 budgets, behavior, nor several other things. 
 
 ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds ad- 
 mit impediments,’ and so forth. Does that include 
 minds with I.Q. .73? 
 
DULL 
 
DULL 
 
 ‘Moron’ is the term applied to those persons of 
 retarded intelligence who are on the border-line of 
 feeble-mindedness, never exceeding in adult life a 
 mental age of approximately twelve years, and, 
 according to the usual definition, incapable from 
 mental defect of competing on equal terms with 
 their normal fellows, or of managing themselves 
 and their affairs with ordinary prudence. 
 
 Accurate figures upon the number of persons so 
 handicapped are not available, but it is a conserv- 
 ative estimate that one per cent of the entire 
 population falls into this class, whereas, among 
 delinquents, the estimated morons vary from ten 
 to thirty per cent of the total number. According 
 to certain penologists, the ten per cent of offend- 
 ers who are morons give as much trouble as all 
 the rest put together. 
 
IX 
 DULL 
 
 THERE they sat — Milly, Elda, Lulu, and Sadie. 
 All of them wanted a job, and all of them had had 
 so many that they and we had almost lost count. 
 
 Milly was plain and Polish. She had been em- 
 ployed as a houseworker, but never long in one 
 place, for she was hot-tempered and sensitive. 
 Her appearance was heavy and uncouth, and the 
 efforts of her various employers to teach her 
 always offended her dignity. Two months’ work 
 usually led to a lofty exit from her kitchen and a 
 hunt for another job. We suspected that her 
 frequent quarrels were merely the result of rock- 
 ing in her solitary bedroom after hours until she 
 could bear the monotony there no longer. The 
 quarrel then resulted merely as an unconscious 
 pretext for a change of scene. With this record, 
 how conscientiously recommend her for another 
 job? And what to do with her if we did not? 
 
 Elda was a very different type. She wore her 
 dingy little finery with much poise and self- 
 satisfaction, and her rouge and her lip-stick were 
 as extreme as she dared to have them in our 
 
146 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 presence. Elda refused to do housework. She 
 had no natural aptitude or training for it and 
 utterly refused to acquire any. She insisted upon 
 ‘clerking’ in a store, and had made the rounds of 
 many of them, interspersing waitress work in 
 cheap restaurants, where she depended mainly 
 upon the tips. She had just passed through a 
 regrettable episode in her life which had kept her 
 in the hospital for a month. But the baby had 
 died, and Elda, who had loved him fiercely for 
 three weeks, was recovering from her loss with the 
 same buoyancy that had carried her through the 
 desertion of her lover. At present she was powder- 
 ing her nose with considerable absorption, until 
 such time as we could attend to her. 
 Lulu preferred factory work and had been em- 
 ployed in the knitting-mills, the wire factory, the 
 candy shops, the men’s clothing industry, the 
 box factory, the leather shops, and I know not 
 how many others. In the course of her various 
 jobs she had met and married a truck driver and 
 lived with him three months. There followed a 
 confused tale of family differences to which rela- 
 tives on both sides had contributed. Now Lulu 
 was left with a baby, while Jim had jumped a 
 freight for parts unknown. To find a factory job, 
 or indeed any job at all, for a girl with a baby is 
 
DULL 147 
 
 no easy matter — but Lulu had been laid off of 
 one job and had got to have another. It must be 
 found somehow. 
 
 The fourth visitor was Sadie, a gentle little girl 
 who had been drifting about for years, but could 
 give no coherent account of where she had been or 
 what she had been doing. She had been sent back 
 to her home on the farm from time to time, but 
 apparently always wandered back to the city 
 when country life began to pall. She could do 
 housework pretty well if she were not required to 
 do anything on schedule time. She never kept an 
 appointment or had a plan. Although she never 
 looked very well, no one could locate any definite 
 malady. Her father sat by the fire and smoked. 
 Her brother stood by the post-office steps and 
 stared. Her mother, after a few feeble efforts 
 about the house, sat and rocked. Sadie liked to do 
 the same. It was merely because she preferred to 
 do it in the city that she ran away from the farm. 
 No one had had the energy to catch her or to keep 
 her when caught. 
 
 If any one five feet two has had to climb a 
 mountain with some one who is six feet two, he 
 will remember how it feels, not only to lag behind, 
 but to know hopelessly and breathlessly that he 
 never will catch up. So with our four — and 
 
148 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 many others like them. They had never kept up 
 with the rest of the world, and they never ex- 
 pected to. They had no habit of success and no 
 conception of it. 
 
 In the course of our conferences with them, 
 each of them submitted amiably to a standardized 
 mental test. One of the problems of reasoning 
 that appears in this test is the following: ‘I know 
 a road from my house to the city which is downhill 
 all the way to the city and downhill all the way 
 back.’ 
 
 When Veronica, a normal little runaway of ten 
 years of age, was asked what was foolish about 
 that statement, she tittered politely behind her 
 handkerchief and said, ‘It is foolish to think he 
 could go down both ways.’ This was one of many 
 indications that Veronica had the reasoning | 
 powers suitable to her age. 
 
 But when Milly, Elda, Lulu, and Sadie were 
 asked to point out the same absurdity, the re- 
 sponses were quite different. 
 
 Milly said, ‘It is foolish to go downhill’; and 
 being pressed for further reasons, she merely 
 added, ‘Foolish to go down to a city that is up.’ 
 
 Elda, who had much more society manner and 
 desire to please, laughed very heartily at the 
 statement and said it was certainly very foolish. 
 
DULL 149 
 
 ‘Why is it foolish?’ asked the examiner. 
 
 ‘It sounds so comical,’ laughed Elda. 
 
 ‘But why?’ was the persistent inquiry. 
 
 ‘Because if it went to the city, naturally it went 
 back. It’s foolish to say it twice. It’s the words 
 that are so comical.’ And she laughed again, full 
 of good-nature and desire to please. 
 
 Lulu went on another line: ‘Did he live by the 
 road? It’s foolish to go by the road if he lives in 
 the city.’ 
 
 And little Sadie, after some minutes of smiling 
 silence, asked gently, ‘Why did he tell her that?’ 
 and shook her head at any invitation to say 
 more. 
 
 Another absurdity is, ‘The police found the 
 body of a girl cut into eighteen pieces; they think 
 that she killed herself.’ 
 
 ‘What is foolish about that?’ 
 
 Again ten-year-old Veronica relapsed into her 
 pocket-handkerchief in giggles. ‘Good-night!’ 
 said she. ‘She couldn’t do it.’ 
 
 But poor cross-grained Milly took another view. 
 The problem seemed to her a personal affront. 
 ‘She couldn’t get the chance. Always watching 
 you. They’d catch her all right,’ was her reaction 
 to the problem, 
 
 Elda hardly thought it polite to laugh at so 
 
150 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 serious an episode, and, after a good deal of re- 
 petition of the question as she fussed with her 
 mangy little fur, she remarked that it was foolish 
 for girls in trouble to try to kill themselves; it 
 didn’t pay. 
 
 Lulu was a skeptic. She announced that for her 
 part she didn’t believe that the police did find her! 
 If they found her dead, maybe she was dead. 
 ‘But I just don’t believe it!’ 
 
 Sadie, as always, was reluctant to talk, but she 
 finally ventured that ‘sometimes it wasn’t so 
 foolish as people think.’ 
 
 A request to point out an absurdity in the 
 statement, ‘An engineer said, ‘‘The more cars I 
 have on my train, the faster I can go,’’’ elicited 
 the following answers: Milly said, ‘That’s right. 
 If a certain amount, it pulls faster than with few.’ 
 Elda said, ‘One car goes as fast as ten if the 
 engine is good.’ Lulu asked, ‘What makes it go?’ 
 And Sadie murmured, ‘He can’t have cars if he 
 has an engine.’ 
 
 Since two of the girls were twenty-one and the 
 other two were almost old enough to vote, it was 
 interesting to know what was their idea of the 
 difference between a president and a king. It was 
 hardly likely that they would have much concep- 
 tion of any difference when their reasoning powers 
 
DUES I51 
 
 were so slight, but we had a certain curiosity to 
 know what they would say. 
 
 All of them were ready in their responses and all 
 of them showed a robust faith in the superiority 
 of presidents. Milly as usual took a gloomy view. 
 ‘A president builds up, but kings mostly kill you,’ 
 was her summing-up of the situation. The more 
 kindly Elda gave as her difference that the prest- 
 dent gives others a chance, while the king watches 
 the soldiers. Lulu agreed that the king was fond 
 of war, but thought that the president limited his 
 activities to watching the high cost of living —a 
 somber picture, indeed, of the view from the 
 White House windows. Sadie murmured some- 
 thing about a throne, and added that, though the 
 king was older, he usually gave more parties. So 
 much for the political outlook of the four. 
 
 A still further test of reasoning was the follow- 
 ing: ‘Why should we judge a person more by what 
 he does than by what he says?’ No particular 
 answer was required but any reasonable answer 
 was acceptable. Here is Milly: ‘Everybody lies. 
 You can only judge by what they say.’ Lulu 
 ventured, ‘It’s according to what they say.’ 
 And Sadie. ‘You should do what’s right.’ Elda 
 gave a light little laugh suitable for an afternoon 
 tea and asked coquettishly, ‘Read the mind?’ — 
 
152 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 an answer of the type that had always made 
 people give Elda credit for more judgment than 
 she had. It seemed to mean something, and yet, 
 like all of her remarks, it just failed to have a 
 point. 
 
 Asked to interpret the simple fable of the hare 
 and the tortoise, and to tell what lesson might be 
 learned from it, Milly kept to solid fact and said, 
 ‘It teaches about a hare and a tortoise.’ Elda 
 wagged her head knowingly and said, ‘Bible 
 history.’ Lulu said, ‘It don’t pay to be a fool.’ 
 And Sadie, ‘About animals.’ 
 | Yet with all this mistiness of comprehension, 
 this thick fog through which rational ideas loomed 
 so faintly, the girls could not be called entirely 
 feeble-minded. They had fair memories and could 
 do simple sums in addition and subtraction. They 
 could read books and newspapers (although one 
 could not but wonder what they made of what 
 they read), and they could all use words, Elda 
 especially using them with great fluency, although 
 the meanings of the words were often peculiar to 
 herself. ‘Revenge’ meant ‘you do it,’ and ‘envy,’ 
 ‘you give in.’ ‘Regard’ meant ‘letter received, 
 like au revoir,’ and ‘Mars’ (with a simper), ‘if 
 you’re pretty and single, he “‘mahries” you.’ 
 ‘Civil’ meant ‘you are not. crazy,’ or ‘American,’ 
 
DULL 153 
 
 though Sadie was sure it was ‘big’ because the 
 Civil War was big. 
 
 All the girls could analyze a simple comparison 
 of two substances and say why wood and coal were 
 alike. ‘You burn ’em,’ was their response. But 
 when it came to noting any similarity at all 
 between three materials such as wool, cotton, and 
 leather, Milly could get no further than that 
 cotton was made from scraps of wool, and the 
 others shook their heads. 
 
 Lulu could remember some arithmetic, but 
 how could she be expected to live within her 
 husband’s income when she reckoned in terms of 
 time a sum whose answer was thirty-five cents 
 and gave two years as her result? 
 
 How can Elda, with her red cheeks and her 
 ready if witless responses, fail to attract another 
 lover as faithless as her first? In what terms shall 
 one preach thrift or chastity to the dim little mind 
 of a twenty-year-old girl whose definition of ‘ jus- 
 tice’ is ‘peace,’ ‘because I went to a justice of the 
 peace’; whose definition of ‘charity’ is first 
 ‘wagon,’ and who, when informed that it is not the 
 same as ‘chariot,’ tried again and says, ‘You’ve 
 got control’? In what parables shall one preach to 
 Sadie, whose analysis of the lesson to be learned 
 from the fable of the milkmaid who counted her 
 
154 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 chickens before they were hatched was, ‘Learn 
 children’? 
 
 Yet Milly and Lulu, Elda and Sadie all are here 
 and all must earn their livings until they marry. 
 After they marry, they must either get their 
 husbands to support them or support themselves. 
 They will probably try both methods, and find 
 both equally difficult. In the meantime they must 
 live, eating as much and dressing in more or less 
 the same fashion as the rest of us. They must have 
 a room to live in, and they must live with other 
 girls so that they will not be lonesome. They 
 must have a place to entertain the lovers whom 
 they are sure to attract, and something to enter- 
 tain them with, and some one to show them how 
 to do it suitably. They must be helped patiently 
 in the long task of paying their bills. They must 
 be encouraged to refrain from quarrels and lies 
 and profanity and light-fingeredness and dirty 
 stories, and to substitute for these good manners, 
 truth-telling, honesty, and an appreciation of wit 
 that is not obscene. This is an uphill road for 
 girls who did not learn such lessons in their child- 
 hood and who are not very quick and adaptable 
 at getting new ideas, and it is often uphill work 
 for their teachers. 
 
 Many are the places of refuge for a girl who 
 
DULL Nagle 
 
 is rich and dull, and the girl who is poor but bright 
 is finding more open roads every year. But the 
 girl who is not gifted either in her mind or in her 
 purse, and whose environment has steadily ex- 
 ploited all her weaknesses, needs a consideration 
 that she has seldom received because she could 
 never pay for it. Yet she and her brothers are 
 with us in vast numbers. Have they a right to 
 live? If so, how can we help them to live safely? 
 

 
Xx 
 THE TWO MARGARETS 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 
 
 Imitation is the instinctive tendency to copy the 
 behavior of those whom we consciously or uncon- 
 sciously regard as models. It is a persistent and 
 universal phenomenon, beginning in infancy; and 
 the whole educability of later life, whether for 
 good or bad, depends upon this trait. Whenever 
 one individual shows superiority of any kind, 
 others are restless until they imitate him, and in 
 social life one large mass of people is always en- 
 gaged in imitating the fashions of those whom it 
 admires as leaders, whether or not the fashions 
 are desirable for themselves. 
 
x 
 THE TWO MARGARETS 
 
 THERE was excitement throughout the women’s 
 dormitory that evening. In the upper rooms 
 where the students lived and in the maid’s kitchen 
 in the basement, the air was vibrant with antici- » 
 pation and festivity. For once the students and 
 the maids agreed upon the desirability of an early 
 dinner eaten with dispatch, and with no dawdling 
 over the dessert. In fact none of the girls who 
 were going to the Prom stayed to eat the dessert. 
 Only the wallflowers, whose blooming was re- 
 stricted to the dormitory and the classrooms, re- 
 mained in the dining-hall to dispose of their pie, 
 which was carelessly shoved to them by the 
 middle-aged cook through the pantry window. 
 Although many of the girl students were going to 
 the Prom, and a number of the girl waitresses 
 were going to the Benefit Dance at Mechanics’ 
 Hall, interest was centered in each group about 
 one person — Margie Crane, a junior, who with 
 Jack Randall was to lead off in the grand march 
 at the Prom, and Greta Klamm, the pantry girl, 
 who had been chosen with Jim Riksla to lead in 
 the exhibition dancing at the Benefit. 
 
160 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Both girls were beautiful dancers, and the idols 
 of their respective sets. In fact they bore a curious 
 resemblance to each other in their persons and 
 their temperaments. Margie was a vigorous 
 blooming girl, with yellow bobbed hair, and 
 muscles developed by the tennis and swimming at 
 her father’s country place. She was well-formed 
 and lithe, used to admiration and to doing as she 
 pleased. She accepted her position as college 
 queen with the careless assurance of long habit. 
 She took as her natural right the crowds of boys 
 clamoring around her dance card, the softened 
 looks of the young instructors who could not 
 flunk her, and the adoration of the freshman 
 girls who sent her anonymous flowers, and then 
 gazed at them so fixedly when she wore them 
 that she could hardly fail to guess their origin. 
 Such was Margie, the social leader of the college. 
 
 And Greta by a different route had arrived 
 among her friends at somewhat the same enviable 
 height. She, too, was vigorous and well-formed, 
 with yellow hair, and the freedom of movement 
 she had gained in her father’s hayfield and truck 
 garden, before she had sought her fortune in the 
 city. If the young instructors melted at Margie’s 
 glance, so did the vegetable man, the janitor, the 
 postman, and the gardener at Greta’s smile, 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 161 
 
 when she was in friendly mood. She made no more 
 effort to gain this popularity than did Margie. 
 She knew that the handsome iceman who swung 
 the huge slabs of ice so easily to his shoulders 
 for the dormitory refrigerators was as famous for 
 his dancing as for his other exploits at the Czech 
 Athletic Club. He and she would make a striking 
 couple for the Benefit exhibition. One glance 
 would secure him for her partner — which it did. 
 It was the same variety of glance which had 
 cnabled Margie to capture the most prominent 
 man in college as her escort for the evening. 
 Both girls were somewhat spare of words, but 
 wonderfully skillful in their glances and in the 
 utter sclf-confidence and imperiousness which 
 these glances expressed. They were not in the 
 least given to analytic introspection, but they 
 recognized this kindred quality in each other and 
 acknowledged each other as peers. Each felt in a 
 subconscious kind of way that she understood the 
 role played by the other girl, and that, had Fate 
 reversed their destinies, each could be understudy 
 for the other without an effort. Margie had a 
 stubborn way of giving her old evening dresses to 
 Greta instead of to worthy under-class girls who 
 needed them more than Greta did. 
 
 Only the week before, Greta had been washing 
 
‘162 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 the windows in Margie’s room, while Margie, 
 having spurned every eager freshman offer of 
 assistance, was trying to marcel her own hair. 
 Margie waved, and Greta polished in silence for 
 some time, then Margie remarked: 
 
 ‘Hear you've got a dance on, Greta.’ 
 
 Affirmative grunt from Greta. 
 
 ‘Got that blue dress yet, or need another?’ 
 went on Margie, squinting at her profile. 
 
 Greta shrugged her shoulders — ‘Got to get 
 another. The rain finished it last night.’ 
 
 ‘Rain?’ asked Margie, surprised; ‘I thought 
 that fellow had a Dodge — the grocer with the 
 gold teeth, I mean.’ 
 
 ‘Yes — that’s the one,’ answered Greta. ‘He 
 has — but I walked home.’ 
 
 Margie turned and looked at her with a slight 
 laugh — ‘Smart Aleck, eh? He must have been 
 pretty fresh if you walked home in that rain.’ 
 
 ‘He was,’ assented Greta laconically. 
 
 ‘How did you get in that late?’ went on 
 Margie. 
 
 ‘Annie,’ answered Greta, and continued her 
 polishing. 
 
 Margie lounged over to her closet and began an 
 absorbed overhauling of its contents. After some 
 ten minutes’ study of her wardrobe, during which 
 
 q. 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 163 
 
 Greta finished the windows and began to dust the 
 floor, Margie advanced with a green chiffon over 
 her arm — ‘Would that do, Greta?’ she asked. 
 ‘It’s not like new, but I’d wear it myself if I didn’t 
 have a new one.’ 
 
 Would it do! Even a season’s wear of Margie’s 
 dresses left them far more desirable than any- 
 thing Greta could buy on the installment plan, 
 which was necessarily her only method of buying 
 anything. She held it up against her before the 
 mirror, and the yellow hair which had set it off on 
 its first wearer did so equally well on its second. 
 Any freshman girl receiving such a gift from 
 Margie would have smothered her in rapturous 
 gratitude. Greta merely threw it over her arm, 
 picked up her pail and said, ‘Thanks.’ 
 
 Margie resumed her marcel iron. Then, as 
 Greta neared the door, she called — ‘Say, Greta.’ 
 
 Greta paused in the doorway. 
 
 ‘You’d better watch out with those fellows, 
 you know,’ she commented. ‘Sometimes they get 
 rough.’ 
 
 Greta nodded. ‘You’ve said it,’ she agreed, and 
 shut the door behind her. 
 
 Now that the evening for the parties had 
 arrived and dinner was disposed of, the upper 
 floors of the dormitory were in an orgy of hair- 
 
164 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 curling, last-minute dress alterations, flowers 
 arriving in long boxes, and excited scurries from 
 one room to another. As the hour wore on, and the 
 girls emerged one by one as finished products into 
 the corridor, they congregated in Margie’s room, 
 to have a final inspection of each other, and a 
 delicious last-minute discussion of the gayety 
 ahead of them. Here the most dazzling crowd of 
 curled, perfumed, and rouged young belles were 
 certain to be collected, and the gossip to be most 
 spicy and authentic. The chatter waged violently, 
 and clustered as usual about Margie, the most 
 popular girl in the room, although true to form 
 Margie said nothing herself, but devoted herself 
 with absorbed and wrinkled brow to the study 
 of her person in the looking-glass. From every 
 possible angle the young Diana in silver cloth and 
 brilliants scrutinized her slim young shape in the 
 mirror, and then, suddenly catching a glimpse of 
 Greta descending from the maids’ attic in her 
 second-hand green chiffon, she called out — “Hey 
 there, Greta, that belt’s not on right. Let me fix 
 ites 
 
 Greta entered the room without a trace of em- 
 barrassment and surveyed her belt in the glass. 
 ‘T thought it was wrong,’ she said, ‘but the girls 
 upstairs couldn’t fix it.’ 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 165 
 
 ‘I can,’ said Margie, and she bent frowning over 
 Greta’s costume with the same absorption that 
 she had over her own. She was curiously deter- 
 mined that Greta should be the belle of her ball, 
 as she intended to be of her own. Margie had 
 watched Jim at his ice-wagon duties that morning 
 from her window, had watched and admired his 
 graceful vigor as any observer must. She felt the 
 age-old craving of royalty to mingle incognito 
 with the merry-makers of another social group. 
 But since this was impossible, she dimly felt that 
 Greta and Jim were to be the shadows, the 
 doubles, of Jack and herself at the Benefit that 
 night, and that Greta must do credit to her réle. 
 
 They were a picture — these two yellow-haired 
 dryads of different social backgrounds. Margie, 
 with a refinement of feature, hand, and ankle 
 which Greta could not boast; but Greta in her 
 turn possessing a wild opulence of bloom and a 
 primitive vigor which even tennis and swimming 
 could not quite give her more cultivated sister. 
 Greta gazed at herself in the glass, Margie snipped 
 away at the belt, and the talk continued about 
 them. Petting — it seemed — was the absorbing 
 topic of the hour. Was it or was it not defensible? 
 That was what the younger girls wanted to know. 
 There was certain to be a considerable amount of 
 
166 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 it before the evening was over — on that point 
 all were agreed. But the opinion of the popular 
 upper-class girls was solicited by the freshmen 
 on the finer points of the subject. How much 
 should one pet? Was it more sporting to do it with 
 all? Or more refined to pet with but one? Did 
 that mean, one at a.time? Or one for all time? 
 Or was there safety in numbers? Was one kiss — 
 say — at parting, really petting? Or did it mean 
 more than that? Did open petting in the corners 
 of the dance-hall show a better spirit because not 
 hidden? Or did it, on the contrary, look vulgar, 
 and was the place for affectionate demonstration 
 in the dark on the way home? In reality was 
 petting any sign of affection at all? Or was it 
 merely a gesture, a sign of freedom from restraint, 
 and to be thoroughly understood as such on both 
 sides? Occasionally, as the talk surged about 
 them, Margie and Greta caught each other’s eye, 
 and an electric glance as of experts among ama- 
 teurs flashed between them. Obviously Greta 
 could not have joined in the discussions of an 
 alien group, even had she chosen, and Margie did 
 not choose to speak. Both girls listened with a 
 restraint more oppressive than speech — never- 
 theless, they listened. 
 
 ‘Well, I certainly should not advise a freshman 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 167 
 
 not to pet,’ announced a popular junior decisively. 
 ‘It’s the only way to be sure of dates. Pet, but 
 keep your head, is the way I look at it; that is, if 
 
 you don’t want to be a wallflower.’ | 
 
 Half a dozen adoring freshmen, who hoped 
 sincerely to avoid being wallflowers, listened with 
 attention. | 
 
 ‘There’s Suzanne. She has lots of dates. Do 
 you think she pets?’ asked one of them timidly. 
 Suzanne was a freshman girl who was getting 
 much upper-class attention from the boys. 
 
 One of the juniors shouted with laughter — 
 ‘Pet? Does Suzanne pet? If you had been at the 
 football dance, I guess you would have thought 
 she did.’ 
 
 ‘I heard she was terrible,’ volunteered another. 
 
 ‘She overdoes it,’ said the junior; ‘she’ll get 
 her pace with a little more experience.’ 
 
 ‘I know some girls who have dates, and I’m 
 sure they don’t ever pet at all,’ continued the 
 freshman. 
 
 “No one said you couldn’t have dates with 
 somebody, some of the time, without petting,’ 
 answered the junior judiciously. ‘The point is you 
 can’t be sure of them all the time with the men 
 you want. And who wants to sit around speculat- 
 ing on her chances of a date toa dance, or on hav- 
 
168 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ing to go with a prune? I don’t, for one. I want 
 to be able to plan ahead, and be sure of my 
 engagements. I have to, to get my clothes in 
 shape. Those girls who don’t pet — even the 
 best of them — get left in the lurch half the time. 
 They never know where they stand, unless they 
 have a steady, and they have to pet to keep ham.’ 
 
 The theme continued to develop vigorously 
 among the guests until one of the bolder juniors 
 remarked — ‘For goodness’ sake, Marge, don’t 
 be so cagey. Can’t you give us some line on all 
 this?’ 
 
 ‘I’m busy,’ answered Margie, her mouth full of 
 pins. 
 
 ‘My mother says it’s a dangerous game,’ con- 
 tinued the prudent freshman. 
 
 ‘Your mother says that, does she?’ laughed the 
 junior, pinching her check. 
 
 ‘Not so far wrong,’ commented Margie, and 
 Greta stiffened perceptibly under her fingers. 
 
 ‘Do you really think so?’ asked the chorus, in a 
 flutter now that the oracle had spoken. 
 
 ‘Of course it is,’ continued Margie; ‘everything 
 is dangerous that’s any fun — racing, diving off a 
 canoe, surf-board riding, skiing — anything.’ 
 
 ‘Too dangerous?’ shuddered a romantic adorer, 
 in a thrilling whisper. 
 
‘THE TWO MARGARETS 169 
 
 ‘Any good game is dangerous unless you know 
 the rules and can handle it. If you can’t, you’d 
 better let it alone,’ answered Margie with a slight 
 sneer, and an extra jab at Greta’s belt. 
 
 ‘Don’t you think that college students ought 
 to keep up higher standards than other girls and 
 let petting alone?’ asked a thoughtful girl whose 
 escort had failed her, and who was therefore miss- 
 ing the party. 
 
 Margie shrugged her shoulders — ‘You're 
 young but once, and a long time dead — it’s up 
 to you to get the most out of life, — There,’ she 
 added, shoving Greta away and looking her over, 
 ‘that belt is right for once — doesn’t Greta look 
 nice, girls?’ 
 
 The girls murmured polite assent. They were 
 not in the least interested in Greta, and thought 
 the green chiffon much too good for her. Greta 
 stole a shy admiring look at Margie — ‘Thanks,’ 
 she said and disappeared into the corridor. 
 
 At this point the sound of the bell below in- 
 dicated that the first escort had arrived, and that 
 soon they would be coming thick and fast. With 
 excited squeals the girls ran to their rooms to 
 await their summons. The hall below was soon 
 crowded with sleek and shining young men in 
 dress-suits, and the drive filled with honking 
 
170 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 horns and grinding brakes. Just as Margie and 
 Jack Randall strolled down the drive to get into 
 his car, they met Greta and Jim headed for the 
 car he had rented for the evening. Jim was not 
 an iceman for nothing. His shoulders were as 
 broad and his step as springy as the best of the 
 college athletes. As the two couples passed each 
 other, they smiled involuntarily. All of them were 
 in the same mood. The young men were like two 
 spirited Indian braves just returned from a 
 successful hunt, and the girls were like squaw 
 princesses as full of life as themselves and as eager 
 to join in the dance of celebration. The eyes of all 
 four were reckless. The tom-toms had been beat- 
 ing in their brains for hours and were to beat for 
 hours more. Physically all four of them were 
 superb, and they knew it — their glance at each 
 other admitted the fact about each other, and 
 about themselves. In a moment they had passed, 
 climbed into their respective cars, and driven 
 away. 
 
 Quiet settled upon the dormitory for several 
 hours. Scattered groups of uninvited girls chatted 
 in a desultory fashion, parted, and went to bed. 
 Annie and the other older maids trudged up the 
 attic stairs, and soon even their creakings ceased. 
 The lights were low in the halls. The tides of life 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 171 
 
 were elsewhere. Not until long after midnight 
 did the first stragglers begin to return. They came 
 in groups joking and whispering, and then in 
 an uproarious crowd. There was much laughing 
 from the darkened piazza, and much scurrying on 
 the gravel. But even this died down after a time. 
 The corridors were filled with the chattering girls, 
 whom the proctors patiently quieted down and 
 saw one by one into their rooms. They checked 
 them off. Every one seemed to be in but Margie. 
 Two of the proctors whispered together in the 
 hall, and, with that second-sight peculiar to their 
 kind, two little freshman girls listened to them 
 through their partly opened door, and whispered 
 excitedly to each other —‘She’s not in. They 
 don’t know where she is.’ 
 
 As they peered through the crack at the worried 
 proctors, a girl in evening dress from another 
 dormitory tore up the stairs and clutched them 
 by the arm. 
 
 ‘Come, quick,’ she whispered wildly. ‘You’ve 
 got to come! It’s Margie.’ 
 
 She dragged the bewildered girls down the 
 stairs and into the night, now at its blackest. Two 
 little shapes wrapped in raincoats scampered 
 after them at a discreet distance. Down the drive 
 they hurried to a clump of trees where a car was 
 
172 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 standing. A man and a woman seemed to be in 
 the front seat. As the girls approached, they 
 could hear first a man’s fierce undertone and then 
 a girl’s hysterically muffled whisper. Both of 
 them appeared to be struggling to get hold of the 
 steering-wheel. There was a rapid interchange of 
 ‘Let go, I tell you!’ and, ‘Look out, some one 
 will hear you!’ followed by a rustle approaching 
 a scrimmage, and then some profanity in the 
 man’s voice hissed between hushed screams. 
 
 The girls stood petrified with fright. They 
 could hardly move. Then the more self-possessed 
 of the older girls urged them on. ‘Some one is 
 trying to rob her — He'll kill her if we don’t go.’ 
 They dashed around the corner of the car just in 
 time to see Randall with a final wrench thrust 
 Margie back in the seat and grasp the steering- 
 wheel. With a quick lurch the car started down 
 the drive. It was but a moment, but they could 
 see that it was not the Randall whom they knew. 
 His face was flushed, his hair awry, and he ap- 
 peared thoroughly beside himself with anger, 
 drink, or some combination of emotions less easily 
 classified. So accustomed were the girls to 
 Margie’s social domination, to her reticence, and 
 her ability to take care of herself, that their voices 
 froze in their throats. They did not dare cry for 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 173 
 
 help and have the whole college about their heels. 
 She would never forgive them, that they knew 
 very well. As Margie had said a few hours before 
 —‘ Don’t play the game unless you know it’; and 
 they admitted they knew nothing about it, were 
 utterly beyond their depths, with no judgment to 
 meet an event without parallel in their experience. 
 They stood helplessly looking after the retreating 
 car — when from some bushes farther down the 
 drive a group of boys suddenly made their ap- 
 pearance and darted after it. By the glare from 
 the headlights the girls could see Jack’s roommate 
 jump to the running-board and another form leap 
 into the back seat. The car suddenly stopped 
 amid confused shouts and the noise of breaking 
 glass. The girls instinctively drew back among 
 the trees as a slender form in an evening cloak 
 hurried out of the car and ran past them into the 
 dormitory. They could hear behind them that a 
 fist-fight was in progress which ended in a peculiar 
 hoarse cry, more like an animal than a human 
 being. Then the headlights went out and there 
 was utter silence. The proctors stole back into 
 the dormitory, but the freshman girls stood for 
 one moment clutching each other with delight 
 before they followed them. Here was life! Here 
 was adventure! Here were thrills! This was a 
 
174 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 college education! They fairly hopped up and 
 down in ecstasy and hugged each other in the joy 
 of the moment. Then prudence prevailed, and 
 huddled in their raincoats they stole into the 
 dormitory a few moments before it was locked for 
 the night. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later, another car started up 
 the drive. It also stopped, and there was another 
 excited argument, which ended with a man’s 
 decisive thrusting of a girl into her seat, and a 
 recapture of the wheel. But this time no audience 
 was interested in her fate. There were no proc- 
 tors watching in alarm, and no boys darted from 
 the clump of trees to stop the car. It wheeled 
 suddenly and disappeared from the driveway into 
 the night. 
 
 The Prom had been on a week-end and there 
 were no classes until Monday. Some of the revel- 
 ers did not get up at all until the next afternoon, 
 meals were irregular, and many students went out 
 of town. Margie did not emerge until evening, 
 and when she did Fortune was again kind to the 
 two little freshmen. With their own eyes they 
 saw Margie descend the stairs, they saw Jack 
 Randall meet her in the hallway — once more his 
 old correct self. They saw him speak to her in a 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 175 
 
 reserved way and press a note into her hand, and 
 they saw her run upstairs and into her room to 
 read it. ‘He is apologizing; he is telling her he will 
 never touch another drop,’ they thrilled into each 
 other’s ears, as they went in to dinner. 
 
 Margie belonged at their table, and she strolled 
 in when the meal was half over. She, too, was her 
 old composed self. The talk was, of course, wholly 
 on the Prom — but in the midst of it Margie 
 suddenly glanced toward the pantry and said — 
 “Where’s Greta?’ 
 
 No one had been thinking of Greta, and no one 
 knew or cared where she was. 
 
 ‘Oh, she’s around somewhere, I suppose,’ said 
 one of them carelessly. 
 
 ‘No, she isn’t,’ said the matron who sat at the 
 table — ‘she didn’t come in last night, and I told 
 her she would have to go.’ 
 
 ‘She didn’t come in?’ said Margie, staring. 
 
 ‘Not until this morning,’ said the matron. 
 ‘She said she had stayed with a girl friend, and 
 probably she did, but I can’t put up with any 
 more from Greta—I have got to know where 
 the help are.’ 
 
 ‘Where will she go?’ persisted Margie. 
 
 The matron shrugged her shoulders — ‘Oh, 
 she’ll get another place — she’s good help, but 
 
176 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 too wild for us to bother with,’ she answered 
 easily. 
 
 Two years later all was festivity at the Crane 
 home. Margie and Jack Randall were to be mar- 
 ried, and the house was full of wedding presents, 
 guests and caterers. A call had been sent to the 
 employment agency for a supply of expert women 
 to help the wedding party with the final arrange- 
 ments, and several of the maids had just arrived 
 and were making themselves useful in the guest- 
 rooms. Margie, after the most expensive milliner 
 in the city had failed to arrange her veil to suit 
 her, had driven her petulantly out of the room. 
 ‘There — you go and fix up mother. I know just 
 how I want this veil and I am going to arrange it 
 myself. I know what I want better than you do’; 
 with which the discomfited modiste had been 
 obliged to retire, and Margie, with the expertness 
 of years of study of her own person, was adorning 
 herself in her own way. 
 
 As she sat before her dressing-table shifting the 
 folds of her bridal veil, one of the maids from the 
 employment agency stepped into the room witha 
 package in her hand — ‘Excuse me, Miss Crane,’ 
 she said, ‘but Mr. Randall said it was very 
 special’; and she laid the package on the dressing- 
 table. 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 177 
 
 Margie picked it up eagerly. ‘It’s Jack’s wed- 
 ding present,’ she said, and then, catching a 
 glimpse of herself in the glass, she stared at her 
 reflection in it and at that of the face beside it. 
 ‘Greta!’ she gasped, dropping the package. 
 
 ‘Yes, Miss Margie,’ said Greta, her pale face 
 staring back into the mirror at Margie’s reflec- 
 tion and at her own beside it. 
 
 The two faces no longer resembled each other: 
 Margie was rosy, her lips were parted, and her 
 eyes were shining with excitement. Greta’s face 
 was thin and drawn over her cheek-bones, her 
 skin was waxy, and her eyes were dead. She was 
 a wan, scarcely recognizable double of the once 
 blooming Greta. 
 
 Margie turned from the mirror and looked her 
 in the face — ‘What’s the matter, Greta? Are 
 you sick?’ 
 
 Greta nodded slightly. 
 
 ‘What is it?’ asked Margie. ° 
 
 ‘Lungs, I guess—JI don’t know,’ answered 
 Greta indifferently, shrugging her shoulders. 
 
 ‘I never knew where you went when you left 
 the dormitory. I asked, but no one knew,’ went 
 on Margie. ‘Where were you?’ 
 
 Greta’s face went utterly impassive — then 
 she flushed suddenly and her eyes filled with 
 
178) OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 tears. She turned her head away to hide them. 
 
 Margie jumped up from her chair and seized 
 her by the shoulders. ‘You’ve been in trouble, 
 haven’t you, Greta?’ she whispered; ‘that’s why 
 you're sick. Is there anything I can do? Can’t I 
 do anything?’ she repeated insistently, and she 
 shook the girl slightly in her impatience as Greta 
 remained silent. 
 
 ‘Not now, you can’t,’ said Greta, slowly turning 
 and looking her in the eyes. 
 
 Margie stared at her, puzzled — and then a 
 little shyly, as not wanting to be too obviously 
 bridal, ‘Did you marry that Jim of yours?’ she 
 asked. 
 
 Greta shook her head and pressed her lips to- 
 gether in a hard line. 
 
 ‘That’s all off, then? Well — you always had 
 plenty to choose from, you needn’t worry,’ added 
 Margie, more lightly — but as two tears slowly 
 rolled down Greta’s grim face, her tone changed. 
 “He isn’t dead, is he, Greta?’ she asked sym- 
 pathetically. ‘What’s the matter? Where is he?’ 
 
 Greta’s voice was stony, ‘I don’t know where 
 he is now. He was in the Pen,’ she answered. 
 
 Margie gasped. ‘In the Pen?’ she reiterated. 
 There was a blank pause. ‘I didn’t know he was 
 that sort. It’s lucky you didn’t marry a man like 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 179 
 
 that, after all,’ she said in a relieved tone to break 
 the interval. 
 
 But Greta turned on her: ‘He was no worse 
 than I was. He was no worse than — than any 
 fellow, than your fellow was. He just didn’t have 
 any friends to stop him that night — and I was 
 like you said—JI couldn’t play the game. I 
 thought I could.’ She stopped suddenly as if she 
 had said too much. But it was evident that her 
 whole self was aroused to defend her faithless 
 lover from the charge of being different from other 
 men, who under happier circumstances had been 
 more loyal. 
 
 Margie stared at her, stupefied, and then a 
 glimmer of recollection coming over her she 
 blushed a deep crimson, and shrunk away from 
 Greta. ‘That night of the Prom — were you 
 there? Did you see us?’ she whispered. 
 
 ‘Sure we did, we were parked down the road a 
 way,’ answered Greta, as if she had been harboring 
 a grudge for two years and was anxious to be rid 
 of it. ‘Jim was no worse than your man was, but 
 he had no friends to stop his foolishness like you 
 did. He says it was all my fault. Maybe it was: 
 I don’t know. We were no different from the rest 
 of you, but it turned out different,’ she ended 
 in a lifeless voice. 
 
180 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Now it was Margie’s turn to be on the defensive 
 for her lover. ‘Jim must have been worse than 
 Jack. No one goes to prison for what Jack did. 
 He just lost his head, that was all. He was sorry 
 for it afterward.’ 
 
 ‘So was Jim,’ answered Greta dryly. ‘He’s had 
 reason to be sorry, God knows, and so have I.’ 
 
 ‘But there was more to it with you two than 
 with us, you know there was, Greta — you've no 
 right to say there wasn’t,’ argued Margie re- 
 proachfully. She felt that she could not bear it if 
 Greta had suffered and she had gone scot free for 
 the same indiscretion. 
 
 ‘Yes, there was more to it before we got through, 
 lots more,’ assented Greta gently. ‘But there 
 wouldn’t have been. We were never with a tough 
 crowd before. Jim was a good fellow before that 
 night.’ Then, as she turned away toward the 
 door, she added as if to herself, ‘But he’s no good 
 any more. Neither of us is.’ 
 
 There was a sudden clatter of wedding guests 
 in the hall, and a chorus from outside of ‘Where’s 
 Margie? We want the bride,’ accompanied by a 
 loud knock. 
 
 ‘In a minute,’ called Margie through the door, 
 and she placed her back against it facing Greta. 
 The old dormitory feeling had just swept over 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 181 
 
 her, that she and Greta were the same girl mas- 
 querading in different costumes, that each was as 
 the other would have been could the princess and 
 the pauper have changed their rdles. The only 
 difference was that now she seemed in an unde- 
 finable way to be the pauper and Greta the prin- 
 cess unlawfully kept from her rights. 
 
 ‘Can you use any of my clothes, Greta?’ she 
 asked, almost imploringly. ‘You used to look 
 lovely in my things.’ 
 
 Greta shook her head. ‘I don’t go out much,’ 
 she said, and then, with a reckless toss of her 
 head — ‘I’m only on parole myself,’ she added 
 doggedly. ‘You don’t have many nights out when 
 you are on parole.’ 
 
 ‘Parole from where?’ asked Margie in a stifled 
 voice. 
 
 Greta, still flushed, gazed steadily at her as if 
 she were the innocent and the bride were the con- 
 demned. 
 
 “I told you I was as bad as Jim was,’ she ex- 
 plained simply as if to a child who would not 
 understand. ‘If you college people slip a little, 
 your friends pull you back. Me and Jim, we just. 
 slipped the rest of the way.’ Thenshe added witha 
 kind of grim humor — ‘I guess I wore your ideas 
 like I did your clothes, and I couldn’t afford either 
 
182 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS , 
 
 of them. Some one has to pay, and girls like me 
 ain’t got the price.’ 
 
 She turned to go, but Margie clutched her by 
 the shoulder and held her. ‘You think it is our 
 fault, don’t you, Greta? If we had been different, 
 then you would have been?’ She felt that she 
 must at least take the blame for Greta’s mis- 
 chance, since she had escaped her punishment. 
 
 ‘T don’t know whose fault it is — it just hap- 
 pened. That’s all I know,’ returned Greta life- 
 lessly, as if she had long passed the stage of excus- 
 ing herself or of condemning others. 
 
 ‘Let us in, Margie; we want to see the bride,’ 
 came in an insistent chorus from the hall, ac- 
 companied by loud knocks. Then one voice 
 alone, a young man’s voice — ‘Won't you even 
 let me in, Margie?’ 
 
 Margie’s face softened. She turned toward the 
 door, and then to Greta, who stood stiffly with 
 paling cheeks listening to the voice of the bride- 
 groom, so like the one whom she had lost. Sud- 
 denly Margie threw her arms around the girl’s 
 neck. ‘It’s not fair. You and Jim ought to be 
 where we are,’ she whispered, almost sobbing. 
 She clung to Greta’s rigid, unyielding form for a 
 moment, and then, recovering her self-possession, 
 she turned to the door and opened it. The crowd 
 
THE TWO MARGARETS 183 
 
 of wedding guests, with the handsome young 
 bridegroom in the rear, burst into the room with 
 laughter and questions. 
 
 ‘What are you up to, all alone, Margie? Not 
 changing your mind, are you? What’s the matter 
 with your veil? It’s all mussed up. You look 
 nervous,’ they shouted laughing — and through 
 their midst the black-uniformed maid from the 
 employment agency slipped unnoticed and dis- 
 appeared into the hall. 
 

 
XI 
 PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 
 
PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 
 
 It is generally agreed that the three major 1n- 
 stincts are those of Sex; Parental Love; and Self- 
 Preservation, or Egotism. Without the continu- 
 ous operation of the powerful sex instinct, the 
 race would not have survived. But it is equally 
 true, that healthy family and social life requires 
 some regulation of the sex impulse and a utiliza- 
 tion of surplus sex energy for other purposes than 
 its direct instinctive satisfaction. The manner in 
 which sex energy is conserved and utilized for in- 
 direct as well as direct creative purposes is a fair 
 index of the cultural development of an individ- 
 ual or of a group. 
 
XI 
 PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 
 
 IT is as far from my purpose here to point with 
 pride to the good old days before the War, when 
 all of us were models of decorum, as it is to view 
 with alarm the present period when decorum is 
 no longer a model. Itis merely an attempt toana- 
 lyze a mode of behavior prevailing among many 
 young people to-day —a behavior which may 
 be old in its essence, but which has a new name 
 and a new point of view characteristic of the 
 times. 
 
 For several years I have been interested in an 
 organization devoted largely to the protection of 
 young girls, whose rash ‘petting’ (among other 
 things) often leads to such pitiable results. One 
 day a young girl entered our office and looked 
 around cautiously as she closed the door behind 
 her. She announced herself as a recent graduate 
 from a large Eastern college, and asked whether 
 she, as well as the untrained working-girl, had 
 a right to consult us for vocational placement. 
 When she was alone with me, I asked her in what 
 she was interested, and again she looked around 
 
188 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 with caution. Then in a stage whisper she said: 
 
 ‘I want you to tell me what to train myself for, 
 but I warn you, I shan’t want to doit. I want to 
 do just one thing.’ 
 
 ‘Then why not do it?’ was my natural question. 
 
 ‘Because I can’t. I would if I could.’ 
 
 ‘What is it, and why can’t you do it?’ 
 
 She leaned forward. ‘I want to get married. 
 That’s all I want to do, and I can’t do it because I 
 haven’t any one to marry.’ 
 
 Any one who has talked to girls on vocational 
 guidance is familiar with the glassy look which 
 comes over their eyes, which says as plainly as 
 words, ‘We will train just long enough to earn 
 our living till we get married, and not a moment 
 more.’ But here was a girl who said flatly, 
 without subterfuge, that she could feel no inter- 
 est in a training she hoped never to use. 
 
 ‘What’s the trouble?’ I asked. ‘If you want a 
 husband so much, what seems to be the difficulty 
 about getting one?’ 
 
 ‘Because I don’t know how to pet,’ she said. 
 ‘Just once, coming home from a party with a fel- 
 low I didn’t know very well, we petted on the 
 back seat of the car. I sat in his lap all the way 
 home. I never had such a good time in my life. 
 But the next day he didn’t call, and I never saw 
 
PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 189 
 
 him again, so I suppose I didn’t do it right — too 
 much or too little — or something!’ 
 
 ‘Perhaps you overdid it,’ I ventured. ‘It 
 doesn’t sound to me as if you were too backward.’ 
 
 ‘I think so myself,’ she admitted frankly. ‘I 
 think I scared him off, and since then I haven’t 
 had another chance. They tell me I ought to 
 sublimate my feelings, and my teachers suggested 
 that I should try to be a matron of an orphan 
 asylum — sublimate on the children. Do you 
 think I could?’ 
 
 ‘If any one ever got a husband out of an orphan 
 asylum, I never heard of it,’ I answered. ‘Why 
 not consult the census, pick out a State where the 
 men outnumber the women, get any work you 
 can find in that State, and hope for the best?’ 
 
 ‘I believe I will try,’ she answered with some 
 enthusiasm, as she left. Several letters have come 
 from her which indicate a happier state of mind, 
 although as yet no wedding announcements have 
 celebrated her success. 
 
 The story of this interview has been given with 
 some detail, because it illustrates a frankness in 
 admitting the state of one’s feelings which would 
 have been difficult if not impossible to a former 
 generation. When many of us were in college, 
 
190 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 whereas our subconscious may have been in the 
 same yearning state as that expressed by this 
 young woman, at least it was Sub — whereas 
 now one might almost say that it is Super. Last 
 summer I was at a student conference of young 
 women comprised of about eight hundred college 
 girls from the Middle Western States. The sub- 
 ject of petting was very much on their minds, both 
 as to what attitude they should take toward it 
 with the younger girls (being upper-classmen 
 themselves), and also how much renunciation of 
 this pleasurable pastime was required of them. 
 If I recall correctly, two entire mornings were de- 
 voted to discussing the matter, two evenings, and 
 another overflow meeting. 
 
 So far as I could judge from their discussion 
 groups, the girls did not advise younger classmen 
 not to pet —they merely advised them to be 
 moderate about it, not lose their heads, not go 
 too far — in fact, the same line of conduct which 
 is advised for moderate drinking. Learn temper- 
 ance in petting, not abstinence. 
 
 Before the conference I made it my business to 
 talk to as many college girls as possible. I con- 
 sulted as many, both in groups and privately, as I 
 had time for at the conference. And since it is all 
 to be repeated in another State this summer, I 
 
PETTING AND THE CAMPUS tor 
 
 have been doing so, when opportunity offered, 
 ever since. Just what does petting consist in? 
 What ages take it most seriously? Is it a factor 
 in every party? Do ‘nice’ girls do it, as well as 
 those who are not so‘nice’? Are they ‘stringing’ 
 their elders, by exaggerating the prevalence of 
 petting, or is there more of it than they admit? 
 These are samples of the questions I have asked, 
 and have heard them ask each other in the dis- 
 cussions where I have listened in. 
 
 One fact is evident, that whether or not they 
 pet, they hesitate to have any one believe that 
 they do not. It is distinctly the mores of the time 
 to be considered as ardently sought after, and as 
 not too priggish to respond. As one girl said — ‘I 
 don’t particularly care to be kissed by some of the 
 fellows I know, but I’d let them do it any time 
 rather than think I wouldn’t dare. As a matter of 
 fact, there are lots of fellows I don’t kiss. It’s the 
 very young kids that never miss a chance.’ 
 
 I recall a wedding at which I was once a guest. 
 It was on the island of Crete, and because of local 
 custom the symbolism of marriage by capture had 
 to be carried out in the ceremony. Our friend 
 Evangelia, who had flirted quite openly and 
 enthusiastically with Giorgio, had modestly to 
 pretend to be prostrated at the idea of marrying 
 
192 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 him. Although a robust girl, custom decreed 
 that she should be carried by stout grooms over 
 the threshold of her father’s house, in an ap- 
 parently fainting state of protest against her 
 wedding. Only a faint wink at us out of the side 
 of her eye, as she was borne past us, indicated 
 that Evangelia was not quite so limp as she was 
 obliged to pretend she was — in fact, not half so 
 nervous as poor pale Giorgio waiting for her at 
 the church. It was merely the mores of the situa- 
 tion. Giorgio must act bold, although his knees 
 were shaking, and Evangelia must simulate a 
 collapse which she was far from feeling. Appar- 
 ently the mores of to-day is that no one simulates 
 anything — in itself a fine gesture of frankness. 
 
 I wonder why veteran educators like Dr. 
 Charles W. Eliot feel it necessary to urge college 
 women toward matrimony. From my experience 
 with them, I should say that never was such ad- 
 vice less necessary. ‘The desire to marry and the 
 fear lest one fail to do so is in my opinion the 
 principal reason why petting is so prevalent and 
 so unashamed. The economic pressure of to-day 
 is so strong that young men are cautious about 
 assuming the financial care of a family. The wave 
 of popular feeling among the girls is away from 
 the pursuit of independence, which was the goal 
 
PETTING AND THE CAMPUS _ 193 
 
 of yesterday, to the desire for romance and mar- 
 riage which has been their goal since marriage 
 was invented. Since petting leads to ‘dates,’ and 
 dates lead to more dates and to real romance, one 
 must pet or be left behind. . 
 
 That petting should lead to actual illicit rela- 
 tions between the petters was not advised nor 
 countenanced among the girls with whom I dis- 
 cussed it. They drew the line quite sharply. 
 That it often did so lead, they admitted, but they 
 were not ready to allow that there were any more 
 of such affairs than there had always been. 
 School and college scandals, with their sudden 
 departures and hasty marriages, have always 
 existed to some extent, and they still do. But 
 only accurate statistics, hard to arrive at, can 
 prove whether or not the sex carelessness of the 
 present day extends to an increase of sex immor- 
 ality, or whether, since so many more people go to 
 college, there is an actual decrease in the amount 
 of it, in proportion to the number of students. 
 The girls seemed to feel that those who went too 
 far were more fools than knaves, and that in most 
 cases they married. They thought that hasty 
 and secret marriages, of which most of them 
 could report several, were foolish, but after all 
 about as likely to turn out well as any others. 
 
194 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Their attitude toward such contingencies was 
 disapproval, but it was expressed with a slightly 
 amused shrug, a shrug which one can imagine 
 might have sat well on the shoulders of Voltaire. 
 In fact the writer was torn, in her efforts to sum 
 up their attitude, between classifying them as 
 eighteenth-century realists, or as Greek nymphs 
 existing before the dawn of history! 
 
 I sat with one pleasant college Amazon, a 
 total stranger, beside a fountain in the park, 
 while she asked if I saw any harm in her kissing 
 a young man whom she liked, but whom she did 
 not want to marry. ‘It’s terribly exciting. We 
 get such a thrill. I think it is natural to want 
 nice men to kiss you, so why not do what is 
 natural?’ There was no embarrassment in her 
 manner. Her eyes and her conscience were 
 equally untroubled. I felt as if a girl from the 
 Parthenon frieze had stepped down to ask if she 
 might not sport in the glade with a handsome 
 faun. Why not, indeed? Only an equally direct 
 forcing of twentieth-century science on primi- 
 tive simplicity could bring us even to the same 
 level in our conversation, and at that, the stigma 
 of impropriety seemed to fall on me rather than 
 on her. It was hard to tell whether her infantilism 
 were real, or half-consciously assumed in order to 
 
PETTING AND THE CAMPUS | 195 
 
 have a child’s license and excuse to do as she 
 pleased. I am inclined to think that both with 
 her and with many others, it is assumed. One 
 girl said, ‘When I have had a few nights without 
 dates, I nearly go crazy. I tell my mother she 
 must expect me to go out on a fearful necking 
 party.’ In different parts of the country, ‘pet- 
 ting’ and ‘necking’ have opposite meanings. 
 One locality calls ‘necking’ (I quote their de- 
 finition), ‘petting only from the neck up.’ ‘Pet- 
 ting’ involves anything else you please. Another 
 section reverses the distinction, and the girl in 
 question was from the latter area. In what 
 manner she announces to her mother her plans 
 to neck, and in what manner her mother accepts 
 the announcement, I cannot be sure. 
 
 But I imagine that the assumed childish at- 
 titude of the daughter is reflected by her mother, 
 who longs to have her daughter popular, and get 
 her full share of masculine attention. And if the 
 daughter takes for granted that what her mother 
 does not know will not hurt her, so does her mo- 
 ther’s habit of blind and deaf supervision indicate 
 that she, too, does not want to know any more 
 than she has to. The college student is no longer 
 preéminently from a selected class. One has 
 only to look at the names and family status in 
 
196 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 the college registers to see that. If petting is felt 
 to be poor taste in some families, there are many 
 more families of poor taste than there used to be, 
 whose children go to college. Their daughters are 
 pretty and their sons have money to spend, and 
 they seem prodigies of learning and accomplish- 
 ment, especially to their unlettered mothers, who 
 glow with pride over their popularity. The pleas- 
 ant side of the picture is that anybody’s daughter 
 may go to college and pass on her own merits. 
 The less agreeable side is that more refined but 
 timid and less numerous stocks feel obliged to 
 model their social behavior on the crude amo- 
 rousness and doubtful pleasantries which prevail 
 at peasant parties. If any one charges the daugh- 
 ters with being vulgar, the chances are that the 
 mothers, though more shy, are essentially just as 
 vulgar. The mothers have no accomplishments 
 in which the daughters cannot surpass them, or 
 no alternate social grace or cultivated recreation 
 to suggest, if petting is denied them. Indeed, 
 that daughters are really at war with their mo- 
 thers in point of view, I do not believe. On the 
 contrary, thousands of mothers live all their emo- 
 tional life in the gayety of their daughters — 
 having nothing else to live it in; and they suffer 
 quite as deeply as their daughters if maternal 
 
PETTING AND THE CAMPUS | 197 
 
 strictness threatens to make wallflowers of them. 
 Do not listen to what their mothers say, but 
 watch them, if you want to know how they feel 
 about their daughters petting! Their protests 
 are about as genuine as the daughter’s ‘Aren’t 
 you terrible?’ when a young man starts to pet. 
 
 The sex manners of the large majority of un- 
 cultivated and uncritical people have become the 
 manners for all, because they have prospered, 
 they are getting educated, and there are so many 
 of them. They are not squeamish, and they never 
 have been. But their children can set a social 
 standard as the parents could not. The prudent 
 lawyer’s child has no idea of letting the gay 
 daughter of the broad-joking workman get the 
 ‘dates’ away from her. If petting is the weapon 
 Miss Workman uses, then petting it must be, 
 and in nine cases out of ten, not only Mrs. Work- 
 man, but also Mrs. Lawyer, agree not to see too 
 much. At heart both women are alike. Neither 
 one can bear to see her daughter take a back 
 seat in the struggle for popularity, and neither 
 woman has any other ambition for her daughter 
 but a successful husband. If, by any chance, 
 petting led away from popularity and possible 
 husbands instead of to them, the mothers would 
 be whole-heartedly against it, and if they were —. 
 
198 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 petting, as a recognized recreation, would stop. 
 I have become accustomed, in work with so- 
 called delinquent girls, to find every delinquency 
 easily explained by the family background. And 
 I have never yet known a girl who was an ardent 
 petter whose point of view was not easily trace- 
 able to her mother’s weakness or her vanity. 
 Sex reserve is not inborn any more than language 
 is. Both must be acquired in early childhood to 
 be used without an effort. The sex restraint or 
 lack of it, which obtains in college, was developing 
 through the grades and high school under a 
 mother’s eye, which either saw, or tried not to 
 see. ‘She doesn’t understand,’ is the girl’s com- 
 ment on her mother, and there is a pathos in her 
 defense of her mother’s ignorance and weak de- 
 termination not to know too much. Obviously, 
 however, one will make no progress with a girl 
 by criticizing her mother, and rightly so. The 
 mother is as much a product of her training as is 
 the daughter, and there is no advantage in lower: 
 ing self-respect when the object is to raise it. 
 What arguments, then, will have weight with 
 girls whose taste and feeling of restraint have not 
 developed in their homes? Personally I have hit 
 only upon two. One is the injustice of the fact 
 that the girl whose family has climbed to a higher 
 
PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 199 
 
 financial level can ‘get away with’ behavior for 
 which the less favored working-girl is arrested. 
 Many an incorrigible daughter of poor parents 
 has been brought to the authorities because some 
 neighbor, policeman, relative, or teacher has ob- 
 served in her the tendency to persistent petting 
 which my college graduate affirmed she indulged 
 in and would always indulge in when she got the 
 chance. Every evening, in the city, ‘gas hawks’ 
 or roving young men in automobiles pick up the 
 young girls as they come out from work, and ‘pet’ 
 them even in the streets. They have done it out- 
 side my window with an enthusiasm which even 
 two large paper bags filled with water and hurled 
 against their windshield by an interested specta- 
 tor failed to cool. A college senior told me that 
 she had dragged her dean (who did not believe 
 her reports) around the campus after dark, and 
 counted seventeen couples, swathed in rugs, 
 caressing each other under the campus trees. As 
 college students they are let alone. As little 
 bundle-wrappers, power-machine operators, laun- 
 dry sorters, and waitresses, they get arrested. As 
 my Amazon said, ‘It is natural to do what I 
 like.’ Very true. The only difficulty is that 
 Tilly and Rosie, and Tony and Mike, say exactly 
 the same thing. But when they pet in the park, 
 
200 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 having no other place to do it, the policeman 
 turns a flashlight on them and orders them off on 
 a charge of unseemly conduct. It is apparently 
 one more thing which a poor girl cannot afford, 
 and I have yet to find a college girl who did not 
 feel this to be unfair. The sense of justice seems 
 invariably very strong. The sense of personal 
 modesty seems invariably rather weak. On the 
 other hand, the ability to think directly to a 
 point, and to admit the conclusion, is rather 
 prevalent, provided the girls can be induced to 
 try it. 
 
 It is hardly an accident that my college student 
 who came for vocational advice found the core of 
 her problem to be that of marriage. For the aver- 
 age girl it always is. This girl, like others, had 
 carefully scrutinized both her mother and her 
 strong-minded aunt, brought up on a vague 
 philosophy of a possible Mr. Right waiting for 
 them down the road, and she flatly declined to 
 face so ambiguous an issue. ‘If he is there, go and 
 get him. If he is not, go and find him,’ was her 
 creed. If having a skilled vocation meant going 
 without marriage, and vice versa (which from her 
 observation of her mother and her maiden aunt 
 seemed to be the case), she frankly preferred 
 marriage and said so. So thought her mother 
 
PETTING AND THE CAMPUS 201 
 
 (and perhaps her aunt) without saying so. To 
 her, petting seemed the most direct route to what 
 she wanted, and how could a candid soul think 
 otherwise? This, then, is the second argument 
 which seemed to interest the girls with whom I 
 have spoken. If their training could perhaps 
 hasten rather than retard their marriage, if, 
 instead of waiting until some young man could 
 afford to support them, they could without apolo- 
 gies help to support themselves after their mar- 
 riage, they thought that they might take their 
 training more seriously. And they agreed that 
 the girl who took her training more seriously had 
 less time to spend on petting. One cannot be 
 working in a laboratory, or making headway in 
 business, or in the arts, and have much free time 
 for getting into the situations where petting is the 
 natural outcome. 
 
 For petting depends on late nights and idle 
 days, neither of which the more ambitious can af- 
 ford. Granted the fact that not all college stu- 
 dents are brilliant, and that the average human 
 being is not ambitious, it is still true that when the 
 average girl thinks that her training might mean 
 the possibility of marrying earlier rather than 
 late, it becomes more absorbing. Harnessed to ro- 
 mance, training is worth hard work. Without it, 
 
202 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS. 
 
 to the average girl, it is a literal no-man’s land, 
 to be gotten over as quickly as possible. 
 
 This, therefore, was the verdict of the jury. 
 Petting is natural. We like it. Wesee no harm in 
 it. No amount of professional training is going to 
 make it less agreeable. But it takes time. It may 
 go too far. It is pleasant to be made love to, but 
 we would be willing to spend less time at it, and 
 more on training for skilled work, if we thought 
 that we should ever use such training when we 
 were married — which we intend to be as soon as 
 possible. If we can see a few married women with 
 attractive homes, husbands and children, who 
 still make any use of their specialized training, 
 we shall believe that it can be done, and that it is 
 worth doing. But we are from Missouri, and must 
 be shown. Our mothers never used any specialized 
 training after marriage, even if they had had it. 
 We never saw a woman in our home town who 
 did, unless she was so poor that she had to. 
 
 Our special interest is chemistry (or dress 
 designing, or music, or library work, or elec- 
 tricity, or raising violets, or being a policewoman). 
 If you can show us how we can specialize on this, 
 and keep it up to any advantage after we are 
 married, we will study it more seriously, and have 
 less time to pet. Otherwise not. Or (more fre- 
 
PETTING AND THE CAMPUS ._. 203 
 
 quently) we have no special interest and cannot 
 get one, because all we want is to get married. If 
 we thought any work would help us toward that, 
 we would be interested. Otherwise not. It may be 
 true that, if we seriously cultivate more varied 
 talents than our mothers did, our daughters will 
 not only love us, but admire us, and find us not so 
 easy to surpass. But all that is too far in the fu- 
 ture. We must secure our husbands before we 
 can think too much about our daughters. So 
 much for training. 
 
 Now for justice. If girls of college standing 
 are going to pet indiscriminately in their homes, 
 their clubs, and their automobiles, then it is 
 surely fair enough to leave unmolested the more 
 lowly petters in the parks, the bathing beaches, 
 the movie theaters, the dance-halls, and in the 
 cars parked along the curb. Let them pet on, un- 
 troubled by social reformers or the police. For 
 petting is natural whatever its consequences. We 
 like to do it, and so do they. As Kant would 
 have it: The maxim of our action must become 
 universal law. 
 
 To this the jury agreed with hesitation and 
 knitted brows. ‘That is only fair,’ they nodded 
 slowly — and turned away sorrowful. 
 

 
 
 
 
 Pah ye OND 
 b 1] Wis an ‘ } ‘ 
 hte ONES 
 
 a, 
 nae 
 j 
 
 
 
 
 
XII 
 GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 
 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 
 
 The intense love of parents for their children is a 
 major instinct among the higher animals as well 
 as among human beings, and operates no less 
 powerfully even though the parents are uncon- 
 scious of the force which moves them. Some 
 phases of this instinctive manifestation, however, 
 are transitory unless fixed by stabilizing habits, 
 and the devotion of the parent for the young child 
 may fade into indifference or hostility in later 
 years, because of an environment which is inade- 
 quate for the development of mutual love. 
 
 According to James: Most instincts are im- 
 planted for the sake of giving rise to habits. If no 
 habit of acting on them is formed, many instincts 
 ripen at a certain age, then fade away or are weak- 
 ened or warped in their later appearance. 
 
XII 
 GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 
 
 GRACIE was the large brunette at one end of the 
 chorus in the Bantam Burlesque, and Goldie was 
 the small girl at the other end, who, by much 
 application of peroxide and lemon juice, had 
 succeeded in becoming a gilt-edged blonde. 
 Gracie was nineteen, had a big resonant voice, 
 and did the sentimental songs, as well as the 
 ‘coon-shouting’ and ‘blues.’ Goldie was seven- 
 teen, and her voice was nothing but a rasp, 
 squealed off-key through her nose. But she had 
 that mysterious possession known as ‘a good 
 line,’ did some funny eccentric dances, and the 
 audiences at the Bandbox were not particular 
 about their music provided the girls were lively. 
 As was to be expected, each girl admired her own 
 accomplishments prodigiously, and expressed a 
 voluble scorn and suspicion of her rival in a jeal- 
 ousy which added much thrill and excitement to 
 their lives. 
 
 But each had other admirers beside herself. 
 Gracie was often met after the show by a heavy 
 man reported to be of great wealth in the tobacco 
 
208 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 business. No one knew much about him. But 
 Goldie was in love with Jake, the solo saxophonist 
 in the orchestra. He was sleek and shiny of hair, 
 with narrow patent-leather pumps, and the black- 
 est of black eyes. He could sob on his saxophone 
 in every trick position invented by jazz clowns, 
 and he and Goldie had invented a few dances in 
 which he would leap to the stage and dance with 
 her, imitating her nasal wails on his instrument as 
 they danced. This was really very funny, for 
 both of them had streaks of the genuine comedian 
 in them, as well as some acrobatic skill, and Jake 
 in his way was a real musician. He relished the 
 humor of Goldie’s singing which was so poor that 
 she made a feature of it, and the imitation of it 
 with his throbbing horn was the very spirit of 
 buffoonery. 
 
 It was just before Christmas and the Bantam 
 was doing its biggest business, somewhat handi- 
 capped by the absence of Gracie, who had vaguely 
 disappeared, and was supposed to have gone off 
 with her stout tobacco merchant. Goldie, there- 
 fore, had everything her own way. But in spite of 
 the holiday gayety, she was somewhat out of 
 sorts, had a cold which took the edge off her 
 singing, and a limp which prevented her dancing, 
 and altogether was not making the most of her 
 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 209 
 
 opportunity of being for the present so unex- 
 pectedly rid of her rival. 
 
 On one desperately cold night, with the ther- 
 mometer dropping lower hour by hour, and the 
 wind like a knife — Goldie crept down the back 
 stairs of the theater the moment her song was 
 over, ran through the alley and into the street 
 leading toward the lake. It was not likely to be 
 frequented at this hour of a freezing night, and 
 she took some odd, halting steps down the icy 
 sidewalk — not an eccentric dance, but more in 
 the nature of a stagger. Stub Kelly, the taxi 
 driver, gliding slowly about on the lookout for a 
 late passenger, watched her with a sigh. These 
 show girls with their theatrical dashes to the lake, 
 from which some repentant escort was supposed 
 to drag them, bored Stub, especially on cold 
 nights. He looked back of him to find the escort. 
 *‘She’s soused, and so is he, likely. But that kind 
 pay pretty well,’ he reflected, so he slowly followed 
 the swaying Goldie, although he could detect no 
 suitor in the offing. ‘Wonder where she gets her 
 moonshine. It sure has got a kick,’ he mused, as 
 he discreetly rolled along behind her, honking 
 invitingly at intervals. ‘That girl’s pickled. She’ll 
 freeze if her sweetie don’t turn up.’ 
 
 But still no ‘sweetie’ appeared, and to Stub’s 
 
210 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 surprise Goldie suddenly struck off from the road 
 and started over the dingy snow toward a tree on 
 the dump. The lake was frozen in great cakes 
 which creaked and rumbled and cracked in the 
 icy wind. One lone tree bent inward from the 
 strong lake blast. Against its trunk Goldie 
 stumbled and leaned, clutching it spasmodically, 
 while Stub watched her and sighed again. If 
 there was one passenger he hated worse than the 
 kind he thought she was before, it was the kind 
 he knew she was now. Like any taxi driver of 
 experience he had them from time to time, and 
 like them all, he dreaded them above all things, 
 and wanted to beat a retreat at once. Goldie 
 would never have been the wiser, for she saw 
 neither him nor anything in the wide universe 
 but her tree. Nor would any one else have known. 
 An anonymous call to the nearest police station 
 would satisfy almost any taxi conscience. It 
 just happened that in such cases Stub was known 
 to be Irish and a ‘softy,’ and for some reason the 
 Goldies, as he admitted, ‘got his goat’ —in a 
 world where not many things did. 
 
 So he drove to the curb nearest the lake-front 
 dump and honked mildly at first, then with more 
 vigor. It was evident, however, that Goldie did 
 not hear him. He sighed again, and climbed down 
 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 211 
 
 from the seat and walked toward her. ‘Want 
 some help, girlie?’ he said gently. The words 
 might have been those of a professional ‘gas- 
 hawk,’ but they were not uttered in tones of 
 blandishment, nor was there a trace of coquetry 
 in the stare which Goldie turned toward him. 
 Her hat was pushed over her face, on which the 
 paint stood out in purple patches against her livid 
 cheeks. The wind howled and blew the snow in 
 gusts off the blocks of lake ice, through which an 
 arc light threw its blue glare on Goldie’s distorted 
 mouth. It was drawn back from her teeth, and 
 twisted into a grimace of agony, as she slipped 
 down her tree toward the ice beneath it. ‘How 
 about a ride home, kiddo? Need your mother, 
 don’t you?’ shouted Stub against the wind. 
 Then he muttered, ‘Oh, hell,’ picked her up, laid 
 her in the car, and headed for the hospital with 
 his foot on the gas. 
 
 ‘Found her by the lake,’ he explained to the 
 night nurse, who gave her patient one look, and 
 told the orderly to ‘make it snappy.’ ‘She won’t 
 tell her name, but she looks like the kid who 
 dances at the Bantam.’ 
 
 ‘That Bantam!’ snorted the nurse, and 
 shrugged her shoulders. She had met some 
 members of its chorus before. 
 
212 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 The next morning found Goldie lying in a ward, 
 very dazed and very sullen. Her daze and sullen- 
 ness were so complete that they amounted almost 
 to astupor. She looked neither to the right nor to 
 the left. She would not speak to the nurse, nor 
 answer when they spoke to her. She was filled 
 with resentment so utter and absorbing that her 
 face was aged and hardened by it. The Goldie of 
 yesterday would not have wanted to look so old 
 and pinched, but the Goldie of to-day did not care. 
 She wondered that she lived at all, she was so en- 
 raged with life. The head nurse came in and looked 
 her over, pushed her slightly to one side of the 
 bed, and laid a small bundle beside her. ‘Your 
 son wants you,’ she remarked briefly, and left the 
 two together. A spasm of rage rose up in Goldie’s 
 breast and almost stifled her. She wondered that 
 they dared leave a child beside her, when they 
 ought to know that she would murder it. But she 
 did not move a muscle. She lay in the same stupor 
 of resentment, while other nurses with other bun- 
 dles hurried to and fro down the ward. There 
 seemed to be a general commotion as of a frog 
 pond on a spring evening, when all the little frogs 
 start chirping at once. From forty little throats 
 came forty variations of the same refrain in which 
 some shrill soprano croakings stood out against 
 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 213 
 
 the lustier background of stout young baritones 
 and basses. 
 
 Suddenly the unquenchable comedian in Goldie 
 began to titter. ‘I bet Jake could do that on the 
 old horn,’ she thought, and suddenly there was a 
 little squirm at her side, and a squeak as ineffec- 
 tual as her own singing voice joined feebly in the 
 froggish chorus. She was so startled at this sound 
 that she forgot her rage for one instant, and 
 involuntarily glanced into the bundle. There, 
 - swathed in blankets, and with a towel slipping 
 over his forehead — there was Jake blinking up 
 at her with his shiny black eyes, playing a trick 
 saxophone in his throat. Goldie was completely 
 taken back at this apparition. She lay gazing at 
 it in silence, then she twitched the towel still 
 farther over one black eye, ‘Jake on a jag — for 
 the Lord’s sake!’ she whispered, staring. But she 
 shut her eyes as she saw a nurse approaching. 
 Goldie still lay as in a stupor, but with new and 
 even more overwhelming sensations added to her 
 daze. What preposterous little creature had the 
 effrontery to lie squawking at her side? She had 
 hitherto ignored the very possibility of his exist- 
 ence. She had turned from the sometimes in- 
 sistent warning of his advent, with a skill bred 
 of years of ignoring all obligations which she did 
 
214 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 not mean to meet. She had run away from rent 
 collections and food bills. She had escaped the 
 installment agent by way of the back door, and 
 the police, more than once, by the fire escape. 
 It must be possible somehow to dodge a helpless 
 little nobody who so dumbly but so persistently 
 accompanied her like her shadow. But here he 
 was — gazing at her with the fixed ill-focussed 
 stare of the newly born. ‘No one ever out- 
 lamped me yet,’ she reflected, and glared back 
 at him as soon as the nurse was out of sight. The 
 little black eyes did not waver. Then there was a 
 prodigious yawn and his eyes shut. ‘Wore him 
 out,’ thought Goldie, turning away, much pleased 
 with herself — but glanced back to find his shut 
 eyes had been but a ruse. He was staring at her 
 more fixedly than ever. ‘Rubbers worse than me,’ 
 she mused. ‘I wish Jake could see the darned 
 little mutt.’ 
 
 Then it suddenly came over her what it would 
 be like to have a big Jake show the slightest inter- 
 est and pride ina little Jake. The thought brought 
 back her rage, resentment, and self-pity, and she 
 threw herself over on her side to gaze upon the 
 face of Gracie, catching sight of her aghast from 
 the adjacent bed. The encounter was too sudden 
 for either girl to have a chance to hide from the 
 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 215 
 
 other. For once, the self-possession of both com- 
 pletely deserted them. With jaws dropping, the 
 two girls stared at each other, and when the words 
 of abuse with which both were so familiar rose 
 automatically to their lips, they died unuttered. 
 ‘Lying side by each in the maternity ward sure 
 cramps your style when it comes to mud-slinging,’ 
 as Goldie afterward truly remarked. 
 
 ‘How long you been here?’ Goldie finally 
 managed to ask. 
 
 ‘Ten days—leaving to-morrow,’ answered 
 Gracie. 
 
 ‘Thought you’d run off and got married,’ said 
 Goldie. 
 
 ‘Going to the justice next week.’ 
 
 ‘To the justice?’ burst out Goldie jealously, 
 rising on her elbow. ‘How’d you work that? A 
 shotgun or the kid?’ 
 
 ‘The kid’s dead,’ said Gracie. 
 
 ‘Oh, dead, is it?’ said Goldie, sinking back, as if 
 that answered all questions. ‘No such luck here. 
 Look at what I drew,’ and she held up little 
 Jakie, whose blackberry eyes still peered from his 
 blankets, and who was sucking mildly at an 
 imaginary milk supply. ‘Ever see anything 
 worse than that to have wished on you?’ she in- 
 quired sardonically. 
 
216 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘Yes, I have,’ answered Gracie — ‘I’ve seen 
 one dead’ — and she suddenly turned her face to 
 the wall. 
 
 For Goldie to marry Jake presented no marked 
 advantages beyond the rather mythical one of 
 providing little Jake with a name. As yet his 
 father knew nothing of his existence, and Goldie 
 was in no hurry to inform him. Jakie could wait 
 for his last name. Even his first one was only his 
 by a kind of natural right. His ludicrous resem- 
 blance to his sleek, beady-eyed father, both in his 
 face and in his saxophonic utterance, made Goldie 
 call him Jakie only because he was Jakie, and she 
 could call him nothing else. What Jakie needed 
 more than a surname was someone who could 
 guarantee him an adequate milk diet. The little 
 fellow had not taken kindly to any brands as yet 
 provided, which ranged from patent foods in a 
 bottle to condensed from a can, but which were 
 all alike in disagreeing with him, and in costing 
 more money than Goldie could spare. 
 
 In the matter of paying milk bills, Jake was no 
 better off than she, for whereas he earned more, 
 he already had a mother and a grandmother to 
 support. His father, somewhat gifted and wholly 
 unreliable, had drifted off the scene years before, 
 leaving his own mother for his weak and sickly 
 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 214 
 
 wife to feed. When Jake showed an inheritance of 
 his father’s musical gift, and could play not only 
 every tune, but almost every noise he heard, on 
 his saxophone, his mother gave up her feeble 
 efforts to earn their food and rent by working ina 
 laundry, and expected nineteen-year-old Jake to 
 give her the living which his father had failed to 
 provide. Although something of an invalid, she 
 was only forty, so was likely to live on forever, 
 and effectually to prevent Jake from ever being 
 able to support a family of his own. The old 
 grandmother, of whom Jake was rather fond, and 
 of whose eyes he was the very apple, was crippled 
 with rheumatism, and could never work again, 
 although she too came of long-lived stock, and 
 had an excellent appetite. Goldie had been at 
 their rooms to practice some dance steps with 
 Jake. She liked the old lady who had praised the 
 way in which Goldie imitated some of her girlish 
 dance steps from her description. 
 
 Goldie would have sacrificed her feelings, to be 
 sure, if it would have done her any good. But 
 since no more money could be extracted from 
 Jake than he had —the amount of which she 
 knew to a penny —and his two parents were 
 more dependent on him than she, she was in no 
 hurry to marry for the sake of a living she could 
 
218 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 not get, and, on the contrary, run the risk of 
 having to support his dependents in case Jake 
 took it into his head to follow his father’s example 
 and run away. She was fond of Jake and always 
 had been. But marriage was an economic pro- 
 position not to be entered into too lightly with 
 a baby to support. 
 
 So Goldie went to a rooming-house, left the 
 baby with the landlady, and got a job. Her first 
 venture was in astore selling gloves. But Jakie was 
 so fretful, and it took so much time to feed him, 
 that the landlady said she could not bother with 
 him at any price his mother could pay. Several 
 store and factory jobs and endless rooming- 
 houses ended in the same dilemma. Evidently 
 Goldie must stay at home with her son and feed 
 him, and the only place where a girl with a baby 
 to feed can be employed is in a house. For Goldie 
 the show girl even to contemplate work in any 
 one’s kitchen shows how she had been shaken 
 from her customary habits. Kitchen drudgery 
 filled her with the contempt and loathing usual 
 in her class. But in spite of the fact that she tried 
 to give satisfaction, and the housekeepers who 
 employed her tried to be satisfied, the experiment 
 was never a success. Goldie’s standards of 
 housekeeping were those of the shabbiest room- 
 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 219 
 
 ing-houses and the dressing-rooms of cheap 
 theaters. Disorder and dirty dishes, tattered 
 finery, and eating and sleeping at odd hours, 
 constituted the atmosphere in which she had al- 
 ways felt at home. She had always fed more upon 
 jokes, dance steps, joy-rides, and applause from 
 dingy burlesque audiences, than she had upon 
 calories or vitamins. To be thrust suddenly into a 
 modern housekeeper’s kitchen, with nooks and 
 crevices to be mopped, refrigerators to be kept 
 full of ice, kettles scrubbed on the outside, and 
 meals produced on time, was as much beyond her 
 ken as if she were an alley kitten. The latter de- 
 mand especially amazed her. Hitherto she had 
 dropped into a delicatessen when she was hungry, 
 or had got some one to feed her after the show, 
 when she was broke. The incomprehensible 
 women for whom she worked, with their eyes on 
 the clock, flew at a meal according to its dictates, 
 and demanded that it be on the table as punc- 
 tually as a showman rings up the curtain. Usually 
 when it was prepared, not without heat and worry, 
 the family had to be drummed up from the piazza, 
 the garage, or the bathtub to eat it. 
 
 ‘Why not wait till the gang’s hungry?’ Goldie 
 would inquire. ‘Skip a meal now and then and 
 they’d hop into line.’ But this practical sugges- 
 
220 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 tion never met with a favorable response. ‘These 
 fat women have to look at the clock to see if it’s 
 time to get hungry and eat a meal. But I suppose 
 they’re hungry all the time — that’s why they’re 
 fat,’ she reflected philosophically. 
 
 Most of her employers, to their credit be it 
 said, were genuinely sorry for her, and tried to 
 help her for the sake of the baby, who, of course, 
 was a great inconvenience. But Goldie’s complete 
 lack of any housewifely instincts usually wore out 
 their patience, and she was unable to pretend to 
 an interest in their monotonous schedules and 
 solemn rites. To pour hot rinsing water on the 
 dishes, for instance, when Heaven knew they had 
 already been washed clean beyond all reason, was 
 a continual irritation. In vain did housekeepers 
 tell her that unrinsed dishes were a menace. 
 Goldie had eaten off too many of them and had 
 survived. 
 
 The simple fact was that Goldie was a grass- 
 hopper, born of grasshoppers, and bred to no 
 other purpose but the hopping and skipping of 
 grasshoppers in a third-rate show. In the insect 
 world, such birth and breeding gives one the 
 right to fulfill the vocation for which one was 
 born and bred. But in the human world, only 
 those with a bank account are entitled to carry 
 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 221 
 
 out such antics. A poor young female of the hu- 
 man species, no matter what her inheritance or 
 training, must be an ant or a busy bee. The leap- 
 ings of the grasshopper world are only for those 
 who can afford them, and Goldie emphatically 
 could not. 
 
 One evening, after a day in which she had 
 melted the coffee pot, left food to spoil in an iceless 
 ice-box, and nearly set them all on fire with an 
 electric iron which she had forgotten to detach — 
 Goldie strolled disconsolately up and down the 
 walk, pushing little Jakie in his go-cart. 
 
 Suddenly she heard, in a well-known voice, 
 ‘For the Lord’s sake — Goldie! Where the hell 
 you been?’ — and Jake strolled up behind her. 
 His saxophone was under his arm. He was on his 
 way, it appeared, to play in a jazz orchestra 
 for a college dance. ‘Taken to baby-farming?’ 
 he asked, staring in amazement. Then — ‘You 
 ain’t married, are you, Goldie?’ he added slowly. 
 
 Goldie stared back at him in silence. She had 
 seen him but once since the night she disappeared 
 from the show, and that was one evening when 
 she had stolen back into the audience, and 
 watched the kicking of the chorus and Jake’s 
 trick playing, in a bitter incognito. She had sent 
 him ne word, asked nothing from him, and had 
 
222 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 never made up her mind whether or not she ever 
 would. But here he was, through no contrivance 
 of hers. On a sudden impulse she pushed back 
 the top of the baby coach and turned little Jakie 
 so that his father could get a look at him directly 
 in the eyes. 
 
 ‘Yours?’ he whispered under his breath. 
 
 ‘Yours!’ she answered. 
 
 He started back as if struck in the face, and the 
 color raced into his cheeks, suffused his forehead, 
 tinged his ears, and ran down his neck. The sleek 
 and slender Jake for once was as completely off 
 his guard as Goldie and Gracie had been when first 
 they gazed at each other in the hospital. The same 
 elemental force had him in its grip. He started to 
 take his breath for a burst of denial of his pater- 
 nity, for vituperation against Goldie’s character, 
 and sneers against the little creature whose black 
 eyes blinked at him from a fuzzy drooping head. 
 But his words, too, stuck in his throat. How 
 vituperate against a girl, thin, unrouged, and 
 shabby, who had asked nothing from him? How 
 argue with a visible miniature of himself, sleepily 
 blowing bubbles in his face? Indeed, how 
 associate guilt or intrigue with anything so in- 
 conceivably innocent? Speechless they looked 
 upon little Jakie, silenced by an emergency 
 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 223 
 
 which no grasshopper jumpings, nor saxophone 
 chromatics had trained them to meet. 
 
 ‘Is it sick — or something?’ Jake finally ven- 
 tured. 
 
 Goldie’s eyes filled. ‘Yes, he is. He can’t keep 
 what he eats. Something’s wrong with him.’ 
 
 ‘Can’t you leave it at a hospital — in a basket? 
 — you know,’ he asked, as his feeble contribution 
 to Jakie’s well-being. 
 
 ‘I’ve tried it, but I can’t. He lays his little 
 head on my shoulder, as if he was trying not to 
 make trouble, and I can’t leave him no more than 
 I can jump in the lake. I’ve tried that, too.’ 
 
 Jake reached in his pocket and shoved some 
 small change into her hand —‘I’ll be round 
 again,’ he called back as he turned abruptly and 
 ran down the street. 
 
 Goldie got a place in another less exacting 
 kitchen, and Jake called fairly often when his 
 business permitted. He never asked for the baby, 
 but his black eyes roved about to find him as soon 
 as he entered the kitchen, and Goldie, thinner, 
 and more forlorn, would bring him in, and sit with 
 his tiny black thatch drooping even more weakly 
 against her shoulder. 
 
 ‘He don’t even cry much any more. It looks 
 like he was saying — “‘I thought I was wanted, so 
 
224 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 I come. Why wouldn’t I? Then I found I wasn’t 
 wanted, so I started to go. Now you change your 
 mind and want me to stay. But it’s too late. I 
 can’t make the grade.”’ His little head just lays 
 there’ — and Goldie would sob in exhaustion. 
 
 Jake would sometimes protest roughly ‘Cut it 
 out about that kid’s head,’ and leave in what 
 looked like irritation. It was true that Goldie was 
 not very cheerful company, and made none of her 
 old-time effort to amuse him. But in a few days 
 Jake would be back again, and his roving eyes 
 would search for the baby as before. 
 
 Finally his orchestra had to leave town for a 
 fortnight to play in a carnival. When he returned 
 to Goldie’s kitchen, she was not there. 
 
 The mistress answered him somewhat suspi- 
 ciously, ‘You her brother? Well, you’re too late. 
 She’s gone, and the baby’s dead.’ 
 
 ‘Dead?’ echoed Jake blankly. 
 
 ‘Sure, it’s dead. Never could keep a thing on 
 its stomach. I did all I could, but it had a bad 
 start. I wonder it lived as long as it did. It laid 
 its little head —’ but Jake had turned and was 
 running down the street. 
 
 A few weeks later, Goldie was back in the bur- 
 lesque chorus. Gracie had married money was 
 the rumor, and had left for New York. Goldie 
 
GOLDIE GRASSHOPPER 225 
 
 had been visiting her relatives, she explained 
 — ‘And they sure did treat you rough, girlie,’ 
 commented the other girls. ‘You must have hit 
 the pace pretty hard, by your looks. Good thing 
 you came back for a rest cure.’ 
 
 It would be pleasant to report that all this had 
 turned Goldie into a hard-working little ant, and 
 that she and Jake, happily married, now take the 
 little ants to picnics by the lake in a partly paid- 
 for Ford — like millions of others who only differ 
 from them in that they had aslightly better start. 
 But so far, such is not the case. Goldie is still a 
 grasshopper, and hops better than she will ever 
 cook, sew, or mop. Jake looks like a cricket, still 
 sleek and shiny. But his mother and grandmother 
 are good for thirty years’ more consumption of 
 his earnings, so he is doomed to be an ant in an 
 anthill not his own. The net result of Jakie’s 
 coming and departure is that Goldie drops her 
 spare nickels into the box in the drug-store (with 
 a baby’s picture on it) that collects small cash 
 for some dubious charity. She has watched one 
 baby die of slow starvation and these nickels help 
 to drug the memory. And Jake buys his news- 
 paper of a little black-eyed newsboy whom he 
 addresses as ‘Son.’ ‘The kid looks like I did,’ he 
 explains. That’s about all. Goldie still has a 
 
226 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 pretty good line, and amuses her rather grimy 
 audience, although the management sometimes 
 finds fault. ‘You sang something terrible last 
 night, Goldie. ‘‘YourR HrEap Lay on My 
 SHOULDER, BUT ITS WEIGHT Ligs ON My 
 HEartT,” is a swell song — no comedy. It’s the 
 real stuff, but you murdered it. You made 
 Jake’s wind break on his sax, and he never done 
 that before. He covered it up pretty well, but 
 you didn’t. You got worse and worse.’ 
 
 Goldie hopes to try the New York variety 
 shows next, and Jake secretly plans to pipe his 
 lay in new fields and leave his relatives to the 
 Charities. What are they for if not for that? — 
 Which all goes to show that if one wants citizens 
 who ply the industry of the ant in the steadfast 
 rays of righteousness, a poor way to get them is to 
 train up little grasshoppers, who know no fervors 
 but the volcanoes of their own instincts, into 
 whose dead craters they fall, dry and shriveled 
 husks, before they are twenty-one. 
 
XIII 
 SILK STOCKINGS 
 
SILK STOCKINGS 
 
 Egotism is the instinct which prompts us to con- 
 sider our own persons as supremely important, 
 and to suffer if we are not held in high esteem by 
 our associates. It is at the basis of all legitimate 
 ambition and self-respect, as well as being the 
 root of selfishness; the form of its expression de- 
 pending upon its early training and control. 
 
 The sense of inferiority which results when 
 egotism has no legitimate satisfaction is excep- 
 tionally strong in youth, and when complicated 
 by foreign background and scanty purse often 
 leads to anti-social behavior. The egotism of the 
 untrained girl is apt to express itself in noticeable 
 dress, for dress is to her a symbol of social pres- 
 tige, sex attainment, and personal worth. 
 
XIII 
 SILK STOCKINGS 
 
 SIXTEEN is a romantic age, and Anna was sixteen. 
 She was also a candy-packer, and received for this 
 labor twelve dollars a week. Of this sum she paid 
 seven dollars to her father for room and board, 
 and the joint care of her little brother who was 
 still in school, seventy-two cents for car-fares to 
 work, a dollar and a half to take herself and her 
 little brother to the movies Wednesday, Saturday, 
 and Sunday nights, and twenty-five cents for 
 stamps and note-paper. This left exactly two 
 dollars and fifty-three cents each week to spend 
 for shoes, aprons, rouge, underwear, dentist, 
 movie magazines, extra car-fare, gum, talcum 
 powder, overshoes, hair nets, dresses, insurance 
 for her funeral, insurance for her little brother’s 
 funeral, hair-curlers, a winter coat, a summer hat 
 ...and silk stockings. 
 
 To purchase all these necessities on two dollars 
 and fifty-three cents a week requires some finan- 
 cial engineering. The reason for the board money 
 was that her father had been out of work and was 
 in debt. The reason for the movies was, that of 
 
230 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 course one had to go. The reason for the stamps 
 and note-paper was that Anna had a correspond- 
 ent to whom she wrote daily. She had never seen 
 him, but she had found his address in the paper, 
 and Anna was romantic. 
 
 Her letters written every evening and around 
 which her imagination circled all day, were on 
 this order: 
 
 Dear Bud, 
 
 Say, Kid, I sure am lonesome. Do you like sweet 
 sixteen? That’s me. I saw the swell film last night, 
 The Woman Pays. That’s God’s truth. She sure 
 does. Ain’t it the truth? Think of me when you read 
 this. I sure think of you. How many girls you got or 
 am I the only one? I sure am true. Are you? Here’s 
 time to close. You know what crosses mean, don’t say 
 you don’t. You ain’t no canary, but I am a chicken. 
 Haha joke. your Anna. 
 
 Every evening Anna penned variations of this 
 theme and while they may not have conveyed 
 much valuable information, at least they were 
 letters, they relieved her feelings, and they took 
 as much note-paper and postage as if she had 
 said something. 
 
 In the course of this interchange of mutual 
 regard, the unseen one had written that he had got 
 married, but that a friend was willing to assume 
 the burden of answering her letters. This shift 
 
SILK STOCKINGS 231 
 
 was perfectly satisfactory to Anna, and the cor- 
 respondence continued to flourish without a jolt 
 in the machinery or a change of literary style. 
 
 Any story of Anna’s career would be incom- 
 plete which left out a determining factor of her 
 life, which was that, although only sixteen, she 
 weighed one hundred and eighty-five pounds. 
 She sprang from a stock built for long hours of 
 labor in a Russian wheat-field, and long hours on a 
 stool in an American candy factory had made her 
 proportions unduly generous for her age. Hence 
 the fact that an interchange of letters with an 
 unseen admirer flourished more vigorously than 
 dance dates with the boys whom she saw and 
 admired, but who asked other girls to go with 
 them. 
 
 And hence the peculiarly critical problem of 
 her silk stockings. 
 
 As every woman knows, the bargains in silk 
 stockings, the sales where leftovers, and artificial 
 silks, and factory seconds, are disposed of for 
 eighty-five cents, cannot be patronized by out- 
 sized legs. Let slender little girls of attenuated 
 stock wear them if they will. Stout Anna, fresh 
 from the farm with heavy bones and muscles 
 strong as iron, could not average more than two 
 weeks to a pair of good quality. As for an inferior 
 
232 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 make, she could scarcely wear them a day without 
 that dismal cracking sound followed by a ‘run,’ 
 which put them as much out of commission as a 
 silk hat run over by a truck. For Anna nothing 
 short of a two-dollar pair was worth the buying. 
 So obviously, an average bi-weekly investment 
 of two dollars for hosiery meant that all the other 
 necessities of life must be bought for one dollar 
 and fifty-three cents. Such was Anna’s budget. 
 
 Now comes the obvious comment. Since silk 
 stockings are so expensive and so perishable — 
 why buy them? What right had Anna to a luxury 
 which she could not afford? And therein lies the 
 whole story. The simple fact was, that to Anna 
 and to all her friends, silk stockings were far more 
 to be desired than heaven or food. 
 
 Many were the devices by which other articles 
 of dress were imitated or their absence concealed. 
 Hats, blouses, sweaters, and capes could be bor- 
 rowed, dyed, made over, and camouflaged in a 
 hundred ways. As for all undergarments that did 
 not show, they were cheerfully dispensed with. 
 
 But stockings! One cannot make them, borrow 
 them, nor go without. Disagree as the girls in 
 the factory often did in their arguments about 
 religion, the relative merits of carnation versus 
 violet perfume, the duty of giving one’s pay to 
 
SILK STOCKINGS 233 
 
 one’s parents, and the desirability of early mar- 
 riage — on one point they were all agreed. Ameri- 
 can ladies must wear stockings, and those stock- 
 ings must be of silk. The mothers of the girls 
 denied this; but the daughters gave to their mo- 
 thers’ opinions the same kindly but condescend- 
 ing shrug which we all bestow upon the quaint 
 notions of the foreign-born. 
 
 They had used their eyes on the street, in the 
 movies, in the shops, and even in the churches 
 and the schools, and it had been amply demon- 
 strated to them that American ladies never 
 ventured forth in the kind of stockings which 
 foreign mothers thought their daughters should 
 afford. 
 
 ‘My mother, she says she don’t see no sense to 
 wearing silk ones,’ said Rosie Procincio. ‘She says 
 they’re extravagant. But she don’t see no sense to 
 wearing any at all, half the time. She just don’t 
 understand.’ And the other girls wagged their 
 heads wisely. 
 
 In America one must do as the Americans do, 
 a fact which their parents could not grasp. Rosie 
 got her silk stockings by withholding from her 
 mother the news that she had got a raise, and 
 pocketing the surplus. Letty worked Saturday 
 afternoons and saved the overtime for stockings. 
 
234 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS | 
 
 Suzanne took the money allowed her for her lunch. 
 Whereas stolid Mame could think of no more 
 subtle method than to take what she wanted from 
 her pay envelope when necessary, and to endure 
 the subsequent parental punishment with a 
 philosophy developed through years of family 
 squabbles. 
 
 Anna, after an argument with a thrifty family 
 friend, and an unusually penniless week, had once 
 gone selfconsciously to work in cotton hose. She 
 was met with — ‘Who put bandages on the grand 
 piano, Anna?’ — ‘Are you sixty? I thought you 
 wuz sixteen.’ — ‘That’s right, girlie, save your 
 money. I wisht I could.’— ‘Did you dance your 
 feet out of the other pair, or are you saving ’em 
 in your hope chest?’ — ‘Better wear ’em before 
 you re married for you'll never get ’em afterwards.’ 
 — ‘Why not paint some on, and save all your 
 money?’ — Andsoonandsoon. Poor Anna tried 
 to make a few bright sallies in return, but she was 
 not very quick of speech, and, after all, what could 
 she say? The other girls had stated the exact 
 truth. 
 
 She had laid aside her one extra pair against the 
 time when she might meet her unseen friend at the 
 station, and walk proudly with him to the priest. 
 But this evening after work she could hardly get 
 
SILK STOCKINGS 235 
 
 home fast enough to pull them out of the old 
 orange-crate which figured as her hope chest. 
 They represented some weeks of saving, for they 
 were chiffon hose of the four-dollar variety. She 
 sighed a little that they must be wasted on the 
 factory instead of being saved for Frank. But 
 she had no choice. She knew that she could never 
 bear another day of such humiliation as that 
 which she had just passed through. The next 
 morning a chorus of ‘Gee, look at the swell socks! 
 Who’s your friend? I'll bet they set back the poor 
 gink for five berries.’ — ‘Don’t put your wad in 
 that bank, Anna. The spider-web national ain’t 
 safe.’ — ‘Say, girlie, give me the loan of ’em 
 to-night. They just match my new kicks’ — and 
 similar cheerful comments, salved all wounds, and 
 Anna’s self-respect was restored. 
 
 But the greatest event in Anna’s life hitherto, 
 was yet to come. One evening about a week after 
 this episode, she found a letter waiting for her 
 on her return from the factory. It ran: 
 
 Dear anna, how is it can you come? I got house and 
 fonograf most paid for. good job to. if you like be my 
 wife come 10.30 train to sladeville if you dont want it, 
 send back ticket. law will get you if you take ticket 
 and don’t come, but you come and have nice home 
 near pictures. hope you can work good. I love you. 
 
 Frank 
 
236 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Now a proposal is an interesting event to any 
 woman at any time, no matter what her age or 
 her occupation. But a proposal to sixteen-year- 
 old Anna, after a year in a candy factory with no 
 local beaux, a trip to an unknown city full of 
 pictures, and a lover’s proof of sincerity in the 
 shape of a railroad ticket was enough to take her 
 breath away. It meant leaving her father and 
 brother without a housekeeper; but Anna could 
 not even face the possibility of not using her 
 ticket at once. She avoided argument when 
 possible, so she decided to take no risk of refusal 
 from her father, but to run away. A hurried post- 
 card ornamented with a highly colored pair of 
 lovers sent word to Frank when he might expect 
 his bride. 
 
 The next morning she got her father’s breakfast, 
 hurried her brother off to school, and opened her 
 purse. There would be no pay from the factory 
 for another week, but she could not wait for that. 
 With her last twelve dollars she had already paid 
 her board and loaned three dollars to her father. 
 That left two dollars. She had also paid fifty 
 cents for a movie and fifty cents for fares, which 
 left her with three quarters and two dimes after 
 the postcard had been mailed. She laid the coins 
 and the ticket on the table, and turned to pack 
 
SILK STOCKINGS 237 
 
 the contents of the orange-crate in a newspaper. 
 Then she bent down incautiously, to put on her 
 best slippers. Crack — the threads of the over- 
 worked chiffon hose gave way, and two runs tore 
 like lightning from each ruptured knee and dis- 
 appeared into the toe of each slipper. In an in- 
 stant both stockings were the most hopeless 
 wrecks that ever faced an exasperated bride. 
 This was too much. The train went within an 
 hour. She had got to be in it, and she had got to 
 greet her lover in silk stockings. There was but 
 one way. She gave a hasty twist to the remnants 
 which she wore, tied up her bundle, and hurried 
 to the store on the corner where she did so much 
 of her ‘window shopping.’ While the woman in 
 charge was waiting on another customer, Anna 
 slipped a pair of stockings from the counter under 
 her bundle and walked out of the store. Once 
 around the corner she ran for the train as fast as 
 she could go. At the station a wait of a few min- 
 utes ended her suspense, and she was seated hot 
 and breathless in the train for a three-hour run to 
 Sladeville. 
 
 The excitement of her journey completely 
 eclipsed any pricks of conscience for her theft. 
 She could think of nothing but the joy ahead, and 
 (after the change had been made in the women’s 
 
238 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 compartment) of how nice her feet looked, even 
 if the slippers were so tight that they hurt. 
 Sladeville boasted but a small station, much less 
 imposing than the one she had left, but it had the 
 advantage that in its small waiting-room there 
 would be no chance of missing Frank. Although 
 she had no idea how he looked, her dreams had 
 pictured him in the likeness of Rudolph Val- 
 entino, and her wish was father to her thoughts. 
 
 But no Rudolph remained after the other 
 passengers had left the station; no one but a small 
 swarthy elderly man who was nervously wiping 
 a bald brow with a blue bandana handkerchief. 
 Anna stood ready to cry with disappointment, and 
 the elderly man looked equally distressed. 
 
 Finally he stepped up to Anna, ‘Did you see a 
 nice little girl on that train, named Anna — Anna 
 Kopsky?’ he asked, furtively making sure of the 
 name from a postcard in his hand. | 
 
 Anna stared at him and at the card, with 
 amazement. 
 
 ‘That’s my name,’ she said; and then an idea 
 striking her, ‘Did Frank Severino ask you to 
 come for me?’ she inquired eagerly. 
 
 The little man stared. ‘I am Frank Severino,’ 
 he gasped huskily. 
 
 Never did dreams meet facts with a ruder clash. 
 
SILK STOCKINGS 239 
 
 Anna’s mind was so full of her Rudolph image that 
 she could hardly believe her eyes. As for poor 
 Frank, the lonely widower, his idle fancy of a girl 
 slender and dark, such as he used to dance with 
 when he was a boy in Italy, was so overwhelmed 
 by the actuality of the powerful Anna, that he 
 instinctively edged away from her and glanced 
 toward the door. 
 
 But his wits speedily came back, for after all he 
 was experienced in the ways of women, having 
 had two wives, and several daughters of Anna’s 
 age. He recovered his voice first. 
 
 ‘Maybe you no like this town,’ he insinuated, 
 sidling toward the ticket office. ‘Maybe you want 
 to go home.’ 
 
 Anna was crying, but she nodded her head, and 
 accepted the ticket which Frank soon shoved into 
 her hand. ‘ 
 
 ‘That right. You go home like nice girl,’ said 
 Frank. ‘You marry nice big fella.’ And seeing 
 that Anna was sobbing blindly into her hand- 
 kerchief, he improved the opportunity to make a 
 quick but quiet getaway 
 
 ‘Ten bones,’ he muttered, when he got safely 
 out of sight. ‘Ten bones; but thas all right. No 
 good. Too big. Ten bones vera cheep get rid that 
 girl,’ 
 
240 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 There was nothing for Anna to do but to take 
 the next train back, and from then on events 
 moved rapidly. Her agitated father had informed 
 the police of her flight, the shopkeeper had done 
 the same. The stockings, which were now on 
 Anna’s stout legs, and whose origin she had com- 
 pletely forgotten, were easily identified, and, 
 before she had wholly recovered her wits, she 
 found herself seated in an office trying to remem- 
 ber how it all started. 
 
 ‘I don’t know why I took ’em, lady,’ she 
 moaned miserably. Of course she had taken them 
 because she had to have them, and could get them 
 in no other way. But that explanation was too 
 obvious to make, so she made none. 
 
 ‘But, Anna, you cannot afford silk stockings. 
 Why don’t you wear cotton ones?’ inquired the 
 lady at the desk. 
 
 ‘They all laugh,’ sniffed Anna. ‘Once I did, 
 and one fella, he sez, ‘‘I met a good girl,” and 
 another fella, he says, ‘‘How did ya know she 
 wuz so good?” and the other fella, that’s the first 
 fella, he sez, ‘‘Because she wears cotton stock- 
 ings.” And everybody laughed. The girls laughed 
 too, and that put shame on me.’ 
 
 ‘Wearing cotton stockings is nothing to be 
 ashamed of,’ moralized the lady. ‘Your mother 
 
SILK STOCKINGS 241 
 
 got along without silk ones because she couldn’t 
 afford them. And you can’t afford them, and 
 probably your husband won’t be able to,’ she 
 added severely. 
 
 Anna’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I won’t never geé 
 a husband if I don’t wear ’em,’ she groaned. ‘My 
 mother didn’t wear silk stockings because she was 
 a foreigner. But I’m an American,’ she declared 
 stoutly, ‘and Americans wear silk stockings.’ 
 
 As she said this, she gazed into the outer office 
 where three stenographers, one switchboard girl, 
 one policewoman, one probation officer, and two 
 girls looking for jobs were seated, and where one 
 office supervisor and one typewriter agent were 
 standing by the table in conversation. Five pairs 
 of ankles were encased in faultless white silk, 
 two in black, onein gray, one in light tan, and the 
 agent’s trousers were pulled up to display a fancy 
 weave of heavy silk check. The only cotton legs 
 in sight were attached to an elderly German 
 woman, who, with muttered grunts, was washing 
 the windows. 
 
 ‘All Americans don’t wear them — at least it 
 isn’t necessary that they should, anyhow,’ added 
 the mentor rather weakly. As she said it she 
 curled her own ankles out of sight on the rung of 
 her chair. 
 
242 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘Well, Anna,’ she continued desperately after 
 a pause, during which her gaze wandered to 
 Anna’s smooth stolen hose, already straining 
 every thread and tapering so heroically into her 
 tight slippers. ‘You’ve got to earn more money, 
 that’s plain. You’ve lost your old position, but 
 since this is your first offense the store won’t 
 prosecute, although, of course, you have got to 
 pay for the stockings. We’ll see if we can’t get 
 you a better job’ — and she turned to the tele- 
 phone. 
 
 ‘Maybe we could place her,’ said a pleasant 
 voice at the other end of the wire. ‘But I can’t 
 see her to-day. Too busy. We’re having special 
 counter displays, and selling talks, to attract 
 customers. Drop in and see our new line of fancy 
 summer hosiery. It’s going big. There may bea 
 place for your girl at the silk hose counter, espe- 
 cially if she is attractive and quick.’ 
 
 The lady at the desk made no answer to this, 
 but hung up the receiver with a sigh. The inter- 
 view suddenly embarrassed her and she rose, 
 telling Anna to come in to-morrow. ‘Maybe we 
 can get you a nice housework job, where you can 
 save more money and won’t need to spend so 
 much on clothes,’ she said brightly. ‘But where- 
 ever you go, you know you mustn’t ever steal silk 
 
SILK STOCKINGS 243 
 
 stockings again or steal anything else. You 
 understand that, don’t you?’ she asked, with a 
 gaze slightly averted from Anna’s pitiful finery, 
 already wearing out before it was paid for. 
 
 Anna turned toward the outer room in which 
 her heavy eyes could see nothing but the sheen 
 of twenty smooth, shiny ankles, twenty mystic 
 marks of one hundred per cent Americanism, 
 twenty symbols, indispensable yet unobtainable, 
 of a happy citizenship toward which her whole 
 soul yearned, but from which she felt herself for- 
 ever debarred. Their sleek, glistening surfaces 
 shone and twinkled on their lucky wearers, but 
 only in the fuzzy old German window-washer 
 could she see her own future, and the vision 
 quenched the very fires of life within her. Her 
 destiny —a ‘foreign’ houseworker in cotton 
 stockings, like that old woman. 
 
 ‘Yes, lady, I understand,’ she assented dully. 
 

 
 nr 
 
 J PS ~ 
 bas V4 ey it ah ly A} 
 naan a Nee k 
 , , . ™ @ = 4 
 Bike “eae + ry ; : ie nes “y) 
 4h ‘at ) , nt a 1 4 ~~ 
 x mn AA) et ah Sa Aeon 
 ’ f i a a tap ; } ‘ria a Ce i, ch 
 APL ‘ uy She ht) is hee? Snes 
 Te (Ae Wh, RA iy! ‘eee i ae na’ Ce 
 ’ NA Re | iy ae " Maury Mir uf ane 4 ve. mA A Rube Saueas ? vi oat iets 5 
 peg pian i Ute M4 i i io 0s ae ee 
 diay iy iat vy iat A’ a MA tir oA oes br f 
 TA A RC NM a ey WE Daihen yak 
 ; tl ly i Ne et! 
 j ‘ i) 4 rf Lak 4 J \ : ’ 
 ‘ ’ om ‘fs Pe 4 1s My . * 4 Wi Ad ey \ uy ie - 
 } Lon ae tee tiic lee 4 mn ‘ 
 ) > d \ “i? may < ‘ey 4 wh 
 } PG i 2, en , “ay a” On | ., \ 4 " oat LES ( i, hi Ny 4 
 8 Cae : Ha a 
 Pot 7] \ he ee Ley * y : ‘ P 4 ' aA 
 Lis rn, iy ene Die: Hike a vine he z bah Stet res a wl an uA i : 
 4 ‘le aus ie i 4 Vt . c 
 . i “* uid 7% "a f 
 b Y ae , i ? nS RH ACE aE eae / 
 th A ed ‘en : NR as AN sie Ce Wi mr) h, i BS 
 Ris hie. Wi wen AL te “tk | Cena eT ‘ mI 
 + 
 , 
 ee 
 i } 
 i 
 1 Pie Cape’ ||| F AN 
 ie hates 
 j a i eke 4% , 
 iy ‘he ; ¥s \é 
 : eo es . 
 x Grit ett ie ia 
 fF i ‘n 
 i fi 
 hs F H}, 
 rf A 
 : fd | ‘ 
 At yr 
 ¥ 
 i u 7 
 y heat | 
 NE ee 
 bi) " 
 My v ik 
 ! » f ‘ et j eo 
 } J a ae f y ) 7 , i i 4 re 
 MAINA > Wire ui 1.” 0, UW ti lead Ln ugh PR a a Oe 
 x it ay ; aL . hia Ad ee he ny . a) Mae ae th .; eal) Ae is nai A 
 ¥ 4 a : 4 w 7 > ” 
 . : va Ms val 4s te P 7 
 Past yr hl ' i j 
 i bi vs 
 . wie), : Ne Ur 
 P. | ‘Wi 4 j 
 ee ‘ ; iy yy J 
 “ 
 sy : | f Cee | r ‘ j ; 4 J : 7 
 ' ari ar Kaha 4 Ai 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 prey aT 
 VE ahs hi 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 im) ois 
 Ue ial ol 0 palit 
 
XIV 
 THE FIRST OF MAY 
 
THE FIRST OF MAY 
 
 The instinctive desire to be with the crowd, which 
 is often called the herd instinct, is very strong, 
 especially in young people. Human beings are 
 essentially gregarious, and the baffling of their 
 social instinct results in loneliness, which is one of 
 the most acutely poignant and distressing emo- 
 tions suffered by human beings, and often be- 
 comes insupportable. Under the spur of loneli- 
 ness and to rid themselves of it, most people will 
 be driven to behavior of which they would be in- 
 capable if they had other adequate outlets for 
 their social instincts. 
 
XIV 
 SobeEi Ra TOR MAY 
 
 Tue door of a room on the top floor of Mrs. 
 Sparks’s rooming-house suddenly opened, and 
 four girls, laughing and chattering, dragged them- 
 selves in. They automatically glanced at them- 
 selves in the glass, powdered their noses, and threw 
 themselves on the beds. At least three of them did. 
 The fourth had no hat, so was relieved of the 
 necessity of taking it off, and had no powder, so 
 felt no responsibility toward her nose. Her dress 
 was a faded gingham of countrified cut, which she 
 experienced no pleasure in looking at, and she felt 
 a little shy about throwing herself on the bed in 
 a room to which she had only been invited by 
 one of the girls who had taken pity on her. So 
 Nelly sat down by the window, and leaning on 
 the sill looked out dreamily at the wide lemon- 
 colored sky, streaked with blue and crimson, in 
 which the sun was preparing to make a glorious 
 exit. 
 
 It was the first of May, but a warm wave had 
 struck the city which was sweltering in mid- 
 summer heat. All the girls had been on their feet 
 
248 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 all day in the five-and-ten-cent store, and they 
 were hot and tired. 
 
 ‘Gee, it’s warm, ain’t it?’ remarked Emma, 
 with her hands under her head and her feet kick- 
 ing idly. ‘The store was awful hot. I’m all in.’ 
 
 ‘So am I,’ echoed Marie from the other bed. 
 
 ‘It’s spring fever,’ remarked Agnes, strolling 
 over to the window and regarding herself critically 
 in the mirror of her compact box. ‘It’s awful 
 catching on an evening like this. It’ll be grand out 
 to-night — What’s the matter, Nelly?’ she asked 
 the little girl beside her who was staring out at the 
 yellow sky. 
 
 ‘L bet she’s homesick. I bet she’s longing for 
 the buttercups and daisies,’ drawled Emma from 
 the bed. 
 
 ‘Aw, shut up!’ said Agnes, frowning at her. 
 ‘Don’t tease the kid. Why wouldn’t she be lone- 
 some? — What’s wrong with you?’ she asked 
 again, patting Nelly’s shoulder. 
 
 ‘Nothing,’ answered Nelly with a start, ‘only 
 my feet hurt.’ And she kicked off her slippers, 
 showing her shabby stockings with a hole in each 
 heel. 
 
 ‘Gee, so do mine,’ said Marie, and she kicked 
 off her shoes, which were followed by Emma’s 
 tossed from her toes in a high curve and barely 
 
THE FIRST OF MAY 249 
 
 missing the window. There was not a whole pair 
 of stockings among the four. ‘I’ll show you what 
 hurts worse than my feet,’ announced Emma 
 suddenly, and she pulled herself up to exhibit 
 some bruises on her shoulder. ‘Bud done that!’ 
 she went on meditatively. ‘Bud’s my husband, 
 and he beat me up something awful. That’s why 
 I left him, and it’s for good this time. No more 
 married life for me.” 
 
 There was a brief silence after this announce- 
 ment, then Marie ventured —‘He must be an 
 awful fella. A good job you left him.’ 
 
 Agnes sniffed slightly, but Emma wagged her 
 head, ‘He ought to be behind the bars, that guy.’ 
 
 Hardly were the words out of her mouth when 
 a hand-organ broke loudly through the hum of 
 street noises coming up from below. It was play- 
 ing ‘Silver Threads Among the Gold,’ badly off- 
 key, but the spirit of spring was in it, and the 
 effect was instantaneous. The two girls who had 
 been lying in a limp languor on the bed leaped to 
 their feet, and Emma seized Marie around the 
 waist — ‘I'll show you the new dip, kiddo,’ she 
 cried, foxtrotting with her around the room, and 
 smothering Marie’s imploring demand to go easy 
 on her only pair of stockings. As they danced, a 
 peanut came sailing through the window where 
 
250 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Nelly sat, and fell on the floor between the 
 dancers. 
 
 ‘Look and see who’s the fresh gent!’ shouted 
 Emma. 
 
 ‘I don’t wantta,’ said Nelly, drawing shyly 
 back, as a second peanut hit her head and fell at 
 their feet. 
 
 ‘For Pete sake!’ cried Emma, ‘I'll show them 
 who’s in the monkey house, I’m not shy.’ And 
 still dancing, she picked up her slipper and hurled 
 it out of the window, where its descent was 
 greeted by cheers. 
 
 As the third peanut appeared, however, she 
 pushed Marie from her and ran to the window, 
 leaning out over the sill. 
 
 ‘Oh,’ she called, letting out her breath slowly, 
 as she saw who was below. ‘Oh, you don’t say! 
 Well, I should say not. You’ve sure got your 
 nerve,’ and she drew in her head. ‘It’s Bud,’ she 
 announced dramatically. “He wants me to go to 
 Luna to a prize dance. He’s got another guy with 
 him. Wantta go, Marie?’ 
 
 ‘I thought you was off Bud. I thought you had 
 filed your papers,’ remarked Agnes. 
 
 ‘Well, I have,’ answered Emma, hastily prink- 
 ing. ‘But it’s a swell night, and there’s nothing 
 to do if I stay here.’ 
 
THE FIRST OF MAY 251 
 
 ‘I don’t suppose we’d oughtta go,’ remarked 
 Marie doubtfully, also applying her rouge and 
 lipstick. 
 
 ‘How bad do you want us?’ giggled Emma out 
 of the window. ‘You gotta throw my kick up. 
 I ain’t no barefoot dancer,’ and she fell back 
 laughing loudly, as her slipper flew up and past 
 her onto the floor. 
 
 ‘Sorry to leave you behind, Nelly,’ apologized 
 Emma, ‘but I’d go crazy if I didn’t go some- 
 wheres. Agnes has a sweetie, so she should worry,’ 
 and she dragged Marie after her out of the room, 
 dancing as she went. 
 
 The two remaining girls rushed to the window 
 and waved them off. Then each sank back against 
 her own window-sill, and drank in the beauty of 
 the evening. Children were playing ball in the 
 street below. Girls with their sweethearts were 
 beginning to saunter dreamily by. The hand- 
 organ with its discordant gayety was reaping its 
 harvest of pennies in the monkey’s cap. Men in 
 their shirt-sleeves and women in fresh aprons 
 lounged silent on their doorsteps, or exchanged 
 good-natured trivialities with their neighbors. 
 And over all brooded the warm yellow sky with 
 its saffron streamers, its radiance reflected from 
 each western window, and for one enchanted hour 
 
252 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 drenching the dingy street with poetry and ro- 
 mance. 
 
 ‘She’s a crazy kid, that Emma,’ remarked 
 Agnes idly. ‘She’s filed papers three times on that 
 fella — but she always goes back. Nothing else 
 to do on an evening like this, I guess. Don’t know 
 as I blame her. Say, kid, want anything to eat, 
 there’s some corn over there if you can find the 
 can-opener. It must be around somewhere.’ 
 
 ‘I ain’t hungry,’ answered Nelly, leaning her 
 head back. 
 
 ‘Me neither,’ agreed Agnes, ‘but I thought a 
 pickle would taste good,’ and she reached around 
 for a paper bag off the bed, and passed it to Nelly. 
 ‘It’s dill,’ she urged. 
 
 ‘Tastes like spring, don’t it?’ said Nelly, and 
 each girl nibbling at a large pickle continued to 
 gaze, one at the scene below, the other at the sky. 
 
 Suddenly Agnes leaned out — waved a greet- 
 ing, and whispered to Nelly — ‘Quick! See that 
 guy over there?’ 
 
 Nelly gazed about vaguely — ‘No, I don’t see 
 who you mean.’ 
 
 ‘Too late,’ answered Agnes, leaning back. 
 ‘You looked the wrong way. He went around the 
 corner. That was Slim Mackie. I heard he got 
 the Pen. I sure was surprised to see Slim.’ 
 
THE FIRST OF MAY 253 
 
 ‘What’s the matter with him? What did he 
 do?’ inquired Nelly, without much interest. 
 
 A distant clock struck seven and Agnes rose 
 and began to arrange her hair and dress. ‘Oh, 
 I don’t know, I heard he peddled dope. I used to 
 like that guy, but he got too rough for me. One 
 time a gang of us was out in his car, or we thought 
 it was, but it turned out he’d stole it, and the cops 
 chased us, and he parked in an alley and we run 
 into a Chink laundry. And Slim he hid under the 
 wash. And when the cop came in, the old Chink 
 could only say, ‘‘Me no sabe. Me no sabe.” 
 They said he and Slim had some dope deal on, and 
 that’s why he hid him. They said it wasn’t the 
 first time Slim had had to hide. It’s too bad. I 
 kindda liked Slim.’ 
 
 ‘How could you like a fella like that?’ asked 
 Nelly curiously. 
 
 ‘Oh, he’s Irish, and they flash a wicked smile. 
 Even old Spark-Plug here got a case on him. He 
 got her number. He could work her for anything. 
 —-Say, kiddo,’ Agnes went on, manicuring her 
 nails studiously, ‘I’m sorry to leave you to-night, 
 but I got a date with Jim, and I'll have to be going 
 pretty soon. I wish you could come, but maybe 
 you wouldn’t like it, and anyhow you’d oughtta go 
 to bed.’ 
 
254 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Nelly’s face fell, but she said nothing except 
 ‘I wisht I was home. They’re hanging May 
 baskets there to-night.” ‘May baskets — what 
 are they?’ asked Agnes with the polite tolerance 
 of the city-bred for rustic sports. 
 
 ‘Oh, you pick flowers, and then hang bunches of 
 ‘em on people’s doors. You ring, and then you 
 run. It’s fun ringing doorbells after dark in the 
 spring.’ 
 
 ‘Sounds kindda silly, don’t it?’ remarked 
 Agnes, thinking it over. 
 
 ‘It don’t seem silly,’ explained Nelly eagerly. 
 ‘Lotsa older kids do it. People like the flowers 
 except the old crabs, and you throw cabbages at 
 their doors.’ She giggled slightly at the memory. 
 
 ‘The cops would chase you if you tried that 
 around here,’ commented Agnes dryly. Then, 
 after reflecting a moment, ‘Say, Nelly,’ she re- 
 marked, ‘I wish you’d carry these lily bulbs over 
 to Miss Babcox. She’s crazy to get them. She 
 keeps asking me all the time. I said there was 
 some left at the store and I’d bring them. Go on 
 over, Nelly, there’s a good kid. I ain’t got the 
 time.’ 
 
 Nelly looked a little blank at this request, but 
 she obediently drew on her slippers with a sigh, 
 and took the bag. 
 
THE FIRST OF MAY 255 
 
 ‘Do you like the new shade, or is it too yellow?’ 
 asked Agnes exhibiting her cheek, with a flaming 
 blush of rouge on it which almost outdid the sun- 
 set. 
 
 ‘No. You look swell,’ sighed Nelly. ‘I wisht I 
 was going somewheres.’ 
 
 ‘You go to bed,’ said Agnes kissing her im- 
 pulsively. ‘Tl take you out sometime to a swell 
 show, but I can’t to-night. I got a date,’ and she 
 helped Nelly on her way out of the door with a 
 slight shove. 
 
 Hardly had she gone when there was a knock, 
 and Mrs. Sparks, the stout, untidy, and rather 
 unscrupulous-looking landlady stood in the door- 
 way. 
 
 ‘Your fella wants to come up, Agnes,’ she said, 
 ‘but I told him you said to wait.’ 
 
 Without pausing for his summons, however, Jim 
 brushed past her into the room. ‘What’s the big 
 idea, Aggie? Got another fella in here?’ he in- 
 quired facetiously, as he peered under the bed and 
 behind the screen on which the girls’ clothes were 
 hung. 
 
 This pleasantry was greeted by a loud laugh 
 from Mrs. Sparks. *Ain’t you comical?’ she ejacu- 
 lated, her sides heaving. ‘What do you think we 
 are?’ 
 
256 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘It’s the kid,’ explained Agnes. ‘I didn’t want 
 no argument before her. I gotta borrow a key, 
 Sparky, mine’s lost,’ she went on, still prinking 
 at the glass. 
 
 Mrs. Sparks stiffened. ‘Now, Agnes,’ she re- 
 monstrated, ‘you girls got to show more con- 
 sideration, losing your keys and coming in so late. 
 It don’t look right. And Emma yelling out the 
 window like she does. It makes talk.’ 
 
 ‘Aw, don’t make me laugh,’ snarled Jim, shov- 
 ing a bill into her hand from which he extracted 
 the key. 
 
 ‘Don’t let Nelly get too lonesome, Sparky,’ 
 urged Agnes, taking a last comprehensive squint 
 at herself in the glass. 
 
 ‘Speed up, Aggie. What’s the kid to you?’ 
 snapped Jim with the impatience of a man who 
 has been kept waiting, and he dragged Agnes 
 after him into the hall. 
 
 Mrs. Sparks sat herself heavily in a chair, 
 smoothed out the bill, which she contemplated 
 with much satisfaction, and looked about the 
 room. She rocked and waited. The spring noises, 
 the children in the streets, and the lemon-tinted 
 sky were not for her. She had her business to 
 think of. Presently, Nelly’s step sounded outside. 
 She opened the door, sighed a little as she looked 
 
THE FIRST OF MAY 257 
 
 about, seeing Mrs. Sparks instead of Agnes, but 
 said, ‘Good-evening,’ as politely as possible, and 
 reseated herself at the window. She started to 
 kick off her slippers again, but Mrs. Sparks’s 
 voice stopped her. 
 
 ‘Nelly,’ she said in a flat, impersonal tone, 
 ‘there’s a fella downstairs wants to see ya.’ 
 
 ‘To see me?’ gasped Nelly incredulously, half 
 rising in her chair. 
 
 ‘Yes, there’s a fella I had some business with, 
 who was going by, and saw you girls sitting in the 
 window. He said he had nothing to do this eve- 
 ning, and if you was lonesome he would be glad to 
 drive you round. It’ll be pretty in the parks to- 
 night.’ 
 
 Nelly ran to the mirror, but drew back dis- 
 consolately — ‘Gee, I’m a fright,’ she said. “My 
 clothes are terrible.’ 
 
 ‘Oh, he don’t mind,’ Mrs. Sparks reassured 
 her; ‘I said you was from the country, and he said 
 he hadn’t seen a real country girl for a long time. 
 He said he’d like to meet you. He’d be pleased to 
 show you around.’ 
 
 Nelly flushed with pleasure, but pouted. ‘What 
 did you say I was from the country for? He'll 
 think I’m a regular hick. Is it all right to have him 
 up here?’ 
 
258 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘IT don’t know any other place you can have 
 him,’ answered Mrs. Sparks dryly. ‘I guess 
 he could figure out where you come from without 
 my telling him,’ and she hauled herself panting 
 from her chair. ‘Come on up!’ she shouted down 
 the stairs; and presently the figure of a slender, 
 stylishly dressed, sleek-haired young man ap- 
 peared in the doorway. 
 
 ‘Let me introduce Miss Nelly McQuade,’ 
 announced Mrs. Sparks with formal correctness. 
 ‘And you’ — she hesitated — ‘I didn’t quite get 
 your name.’ 
 
 ‘Thomas. Mr. Thomas,’ he answered, and 
 added politely to Mrs. Sparks, but with a faint 
 wink and motion of his head toward the door — 
 ‘Won't you sit down, Mrs. Sparks?’ 
 
 ‘No, I must be going,’ she answered. But she 
 gave him a slight poke, as she passed him on the 
 way out. 
 
 Mr. Thomas approached Nelly with the blan- 
 dishing smile of the professional ‘masher.’ He 
 bent toward her, showing all his white teeth — 
 ‘How about a ride, girlie? You mustn’t sit here all 
 alone. You'll be talking to yourself. I’ll show you 
 some parks prettier than any country you ever 
 saw.’ 
 
 ‘I wisht I was in the country right now,’ burst 
 
THE FIRST OF MAY 259 
 
 out Nelly quickly. ‘The kids are hanging May 
 baskets there to-night.’ 
 
 Thomas looked at her, slightly taken aback at 
 this response. ‘May baskets! I’d kindda for- 
 gotten about May baskets. Where do you come 
 from, sister?’ 
 
 ‘Oh, a little place you never heard of. East 
 Fairville’s the name of it,’ answered Nelly. ‘I 
 suppose you never heard of May baskets, either. 
 No one has around here.’ 
 
 Thomas had turned suddenly while she was 
 speaking, and leaned against the window looking 
 out. ‘No, I never heard of ’em,’ he said slowly. 
 There was a pause, during which Nelly looked 
 shyly at him. Then Thomas broke it with an 
 effort. ‘Was it East Fairville, you said? I think I 
 met a fella once from down that way. Mackie was 
 his name. Ever hear of any family by the name of 
 Mackie around there?’ His voice had changed 
 from its earlier tone in a manner painfully evident 
 to himself, but fortunately imperceptible to Nelly, 
 who was too intent upon talking about home to 
 notice anything else. 
 
 ‘Sure,’ she assented eagerly. ‘There’s Mackies 
 there. I’ve heard of a Tom Mackie, who left 
 town. I never knew him. That’s probably who it 
 
 ’ 
 
 was. 
 
260 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘He said he had a sister. Kindda cute kid he 
 said she was,’ went on Thomas slowly, still looking 
 out of the window. 
 
 ‘That’s probably Mary,’ laughed Nelly de- 
 lightedly. ‘I went to school with Mary.’ 
 
 ‘You went to school with Mary?’ cried Thomas, 
 wheeling around quickly and staring at her. 
 
 ‘Sure. She was in my class. I remember talking 
 to Mary — must have been about a year ago this 
 time, for the lilacs were in bud. The Mackies had 
 a big lilac bush right by the gate, and Mary said 
 how lonesome she got. There used to be an old 
 Mr. Videtto, who ran the band, and we could hear 
 him playing his violin alone, way up on House 
 Hill. And Mary said how lonesome it was in the 
 spring to listen to him. She said she couldn’t 
 hardly stand it. Music way off sounds awful lone- 
 some in the country.’ 
 
 ‘An old wop in my town played like that,’ 
 murmured Thomas with a slight shiver, and 
 turned again to the window. 
 
 There was a slight pause, and then Nelly added 
 meditatively —‘I never saw Mary after that. 
 She left town. Ran away with a fella, they said. 
 I don’t know. I always liked Mary.’ 
 
 Thomas had given another start, and put his 
 hand up to his mouth. Then he turned with a 
 
THE FIRST OF MAY 261 
 
 nervous jerk, and seated himself on one of the 
 beds looking down through his knees to the 
 floor. 
 
 ‘I suppose no one else could understand why 
 old Videtto’s fiddle on House Hill in the spring 
 could drive a kid outta town,’ he said slowly, half 
 to himself. ‘But I can understand it. I’m not 
 sure, now you speak of it, that it didn’t drive me 
 Otte 
 
 ‘Drive you out?’ said Nelly, startled. ‘Did you 
 know Videtto?’ 
 
 ‘No, I didn’t know him, but we had an old wop 
 just like him. — Say, kid, when you going back?’ 
 he asked, suddenly looking up. 
 
 ‘I ain’t going back,’ answered Nelly with a 
 slight pout, as one who had listened to such a 
 question before. ‘It’s too lonesome, and, be- 
 sides, I gotta earn some money and get some 
 clothes. My clothes are terrible. I just gotta get 
 some new ones,’ and she looked ruefully down at 
 her grubby little gingham. 
 
 ‘Oh, your clothes are all right. Why don’t you 
 go home and teach school, or work in the post- 
 office, or something?’ he inquired somewhat 
 vaguely. ‘You’re lonesome here to-night. You 
 said you wished you were back home.’ 
 
 ‘I’m lonesome to-night, but I ain’t always going 
 
262 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 to be. Agnes is going to take me out. She said she 
 would. She’s going to teach me to dance as soon 
 as I get some clothes. I just can’t stand it at home, 
 sitting in the evenings and listening, and not doing 
 anything.’ 
 
 ‘Old Videtto will stop playing sometime,’ 
 commented Thomas. 
 
 ‘What if he does? Then it will just be the frogs 
 croaking down in Duck Pond all night, and frogs 
 are just as lonesome as music. They make you 
 feel about the same,’ answered Nelly with a rueful 
 little laugh, which Thomas echoed shortly. 
 
 He, too, had heard the frogs and the fiddle 
 through the long summer evenings. In fact, in 
 the silence he almost heard them now. But an 
 abrupt knock broke in on their memories. 
 
 ‘That’s probably Miss Babcox after her bulbs,’ 
 said Nelly, rising. ‘I took them to her, but she 
 wasn’t in, so I told some kids to tell her that I had 
 em.’ 
 
 Thomas rose hastily to his feet, and, with the 
 promptitude of long practice, headed for the 
 screen. ‘No use her seeing me here,’ he explained; 
 ‘the scarcer the fewer’ — with which cryptic say- 
 ing he disappeared and Nelly opened the door 
 politely to an elderly school-teacher, who, with 
 many words and much fussy peering about, took 
 
THE FIRST OF MAY 263 
 
 her bulbs. She offered payment; she was grateful: 
 she looked for little stones to prop her bulbs in a 
 dish; she could not find them; she peered about 
 perilously near the screen; she felt that the stones 
 must be in the bag; she found positively that they 
 were not — and so on, and so on, until Nelly, with 
 many promises to secure little stones for her at the 
 five-and-ten, shoved her gently out of the door, 
 and sat down breathless on the bed. 
 
 ‘She’s a real nice lady,’ she explained to 
 Thomas, who emerged grunting from his shelter. 
 
 ‘Why don’t you live with her then?’ he in- 
 quired. “She’s a nut, of course, but she’s all right.’ 
 
 ‘Sure, she’s all right,’ agreed Nelly with a sigh. 
 ‘She’s been to Normal and knows a lot — too 
 much for me, I guess.’ 
 
 ‘She learned a lot about gardening I’ll say, 
 burying bulbs in stones — what does the old lady 
 think she’s going to hatch?’ and he minced about 
 peering in the corners, while Nelly tittered ap- 
 preciatively. 
 
 ‘They’re lily bulbs,’ she said. ‘You stick ’em in 
 stones and water, and they grow up real pretty. 
 Smell a little like lilacs. We used to have some in 
 school ourselves.’ 
 
 ‘Oh, that’s right. The Chinks sell ’em,’ an- 
 swered Thomas. ‘I got mixed up with a Chink in 
 
264 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 a laundry once. I was fooling with some fellas 
 I knew, and the old boy hid me under the wash. 
 I remember seeing those things lying around. 
 Funny old Chink. Couldn't say anything but 
 “Meno sabe. Meno sabe.’ And with his hands 
 folded in front and his head on one side, Thomas 
 mimicked the old Chinaman, totally oblivious of 
 the fact that Nelly had risen in alarmed amaze- 
 ment and was staring at him with paling cheeks. 
 
 ‘You’re Slim Mackie,’ she whispered, slowly 
 backing away from him. ‘And you steal cars and 
 sell dope, and have just got out of the Pen.’ 
 
 Mackie turned as if he had been struck, and 
 faced her. Then, seeing the genuine horror in her 
 face, he turned back, looked on the ground, and 
 murmured cynically — ‘Aside from that I’m all 
 right, eh?’ 
 
 ‘And your name ain’t Thomas — it’s Mackie — 
 unless’ — the light breaking — ‘you’re*Thomas 
 Mackie, Mary’s brother from East Fairville?’ 
 He answered nothing to this, and, still staring, she 
 marveled, ‘I never supposed that any one from 
 East Fairville could be so bad. So you lived down 
 on the Flats next to the Beldens. Say, you knew 
 their house burned down, didn’t you?’ she asked 
 eagerly, for the moment forgetting to whom she 
 spoke. 
 
THE FIRST OF MAY 265 
 
 ‘No. Did our house catch?’ he gasped back, 
 also forgetting. 
 
 ‘No. Only the shed by the snow-apple tree.’ 
 
 ‘I hope it didn’t hurt that tree. Those were 
 swell apples.’ 
 
 ‘The best I ever tasted. No, they saved the 
 tree, every one was so crazy about those apples. 
 And Dave — you remember Dave?’ 
 
 Mackie nodded. 
 
 ‘Well, something awful funny happened about 
 Dave. They had a pig, and the pig got loose, and 
 Dave —’ 
 
 But in the midst of her eagerness her voice 
 trailed off and stopped. Suddenly both became 
 aware that she was not speaking to an East Fair- 
 ville neighbor, but to a city thief and dope-seller, 
 recently released from prison. Both sat down in 
 silence on opposite beds, staring at the floor. 
 
 ‘I wonder where Mary is,’ murmured Mackie, 
 poking the rug with his foot, and rattling his keys 
 in his nervous fingers. ‘Same fix you are, likely, 
 only worse.’ 
 
 ‘How did you get to be so bad?’ implored 
 Nelly when the silence was too ominous to be 
 borne. 
 
 ‘Got in the wrong crowd when I struck town, 
 just like you have. I don’t want to say anything 
 
266 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 against your friends, and all that, but how did 
 they know all about me if they weren’t in the same 
 gang? Stick around them and see where you'll be 
 by Christmas. You’ll be running to any sheik 
 that whistles. You ought to go home.’ 
 
 At this point there was one of Mrs. Sparks’s 
 loud knocks, and in response to Nelly’s ‘Come in,’ 
 the landlady appeared in the doorway. 
 
 She glanced curiously at the two silent oc- 
 cupants of the room, both of whom seemed to be 
 taking their pleasures so sadly. 
 
 ‘You homesick, too?’ she laughed to Mackie. 
 ‘I don’t wantta interfere, but the kids are fooling 
 with your car, and may hurt it. I thought maybe 
 you’d better go if you was going. But I don’t 
 wantta interfere.’ 
 
 ‘Interfere! You? You wouldn’t interfere with 
 murder,’ snapped Mackie angrily, as the landlady 
 waddled in confusion from the room. He rose to 
 his feet uncertainly and took out his watch. ‘I 
 gotta go, Nelly. I’m leaving town right away,’ 
 he said, reaching for his hat. 
 
 ‘Gotta go?’ cried Nelly, almost in tears. ‘Don’t 
 go yet,’ and she ran to the window impulsively 
 looking out. 
 
 She did not know what she wanted. She had 
 nothing to suggest. She just knew that to stay 
 
THE FIRST OF MAY 267 
 
 alone in that unwholesome room with all the 
 world of spring and beauty calling her outside 
 was more than she could bear. The prospect of 
 many more such evenings was heart-breaking. 
 Mackie stood beside her for a moment looking out 
 on the crescent moon in a paling sky, and as he 
 stood, the hand-organ which had moved on to a 
 more distant street, broke waveringly in across 
 the silence. 
 
 Mackie put his arm around her and his cheek 
 against hers. ‘Old Videtto’s playing on House 
 Hill, eh, kiddo?’ he whispered in her ear. 
 
 Nelly whirled around and clutched his arm. 
 
 ‘Oh, don’t go! I'll go somewhere with you. I 
 don’t care how bad you’ve been. I can’t bear it 
 here being so lonesome,’ she sobbed. ‘ Ain’t you 
 never going to take me no place?’ she sobbed 
 as the young man hesitated. 
 
 Mackie dragged himself away almost roughly 
 and started for the door. “Not while they’re 
 hanging May baskets on old lady Belden’s door 
 and the snow-apple tree’s in bud,’ he answered 
 half to himself. Then he turned back suddenly 
 and drew a tight wad of bills from his pocket, 
 thrusting it into Nelly’s hand. ‘Take it, Nelly,’ 
 he urged. ‘You'll need it. You buya ticket home,’ 
 and again he made for the door. 
 
268 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS’ 
 
 But Nelly followed him. ‘Oh,-I can’t take it!’ 
 she cried, trying ineffectually to force the money 
 into his hands. ‘Take it back! I can’t take it!’ 
 
 For one moment Mackie turned, caught her in 
 his arms, and pressed her closely to him. ‘Take 
 it, little sister,’ he whispered; ‘I’m not giving it 
 to you. I’m giving it — to — Mary.’ 
 
 He turned quickly and the door slammed be- 
 hind him. Nelly ran to the window, the discarded 
 bills falling on the floor, and leaned far out. But 
 his car was on another street. She could not see 
 him. He was gone. The colors faded slowly from 
 the sky. The hand-organ played its gay and 
 wistful tunes on a still more distant street. The 
 girls with their sweethearts sauntered, idly laugh- 
 ing, through the twilight. But Nelly, her head 
 buried in her arms and her shoulders shaking 
 with sobs, was left — alone. 
 
XV 
 THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING 
 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING 
 
 ‘Mores’ is the term applied by social psycholo- 
 gists to the habits or folkways of any group. It 
 includes the morals and customs adopted by any 
 individual as a member of the society into which 
 he is born, and which he accepts as a matter of 
 course from his surroundings. The lax moral 
 standards and ideals of family life, which are the 
 mores of certain classes, are accepted by the 
 younger members of the group as uncritically as 
 the stricter standards of a more conventional so- 
 ciety are accepted by its members. When these 
 lax morals conflict with the higher ideals of a soci- 
 ety in whose ethics they have not been trained, 
 the strain of adjustment is always difficult, and 
 sometimes impossible. 
 
XV 
 THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING 
 
 To any who might be disposed to criticize the 
 casual manner in which Amy and Josephine lived 
 their lives, it is only fair to explain that their 
 mother had decided soon after their birth that 
 she preferred the company of her star boarder to 
 her husband and had eloped, leaving the two 
 babies to their father’s rather ineffectual care. 
 He also very soon found that he had made a mis- 
 take in the choice of his second wife, and this lady 
 found herself one day in sole charge of the two 
 children who constituted the only legacy left her 
 by her departing mate. When she in turn married 
 again, the bond with the two little girls had be- 
 come so remote that her new husband might be 
 pardoned for declining to accept any responsibil- 
 ity for the children of the first wife of his wife’s 
 first husband. So Amy and Josephine drifted 
 from neighbors and orphanages to factories and 
 rooming-houses, their lives still further compli- 
 cated by Amy’s baby — the reminder of some 
 half-forgotten tipsy joy-rides when she was only 
 fifteen. The two girls had worked together in the 
 
272 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Acme Paper Mill, and the baby had got along 
 with what attention it could manage to extract 
 from the rooming-house where they lodged. 
 
 The sisters were now seventeen and eighteen 
 respectively. Their temperaments were very 
 different, as were their looks, although both pos- 
 sessed as their only inheritance from their parents 
 that rather dubious gift— the gift of beauty. 
 Josephine was reticent and statuesque with shin- 
 ing red hair and the stubbornness that often goes 
 with it. Amy was small and gay and talkative, 
 and neither her temperament nor her physique 
 fitted her for the long hours of physical labor 
 which was all she was trained to do. Indeed, Amy 
 seemed so entirely unfitted for the work she was 
 doing in the paper mill, that Larry, a handsome 
 young teamster in the neighborhood, had offered 
 her a share in his modest apartment. ‘I can’t 
 marry you yet, girlie,’ he said; ‘I got a wife down 
 Texas way somewheres, but if you want some 
 place to take care of the kid, and don’t mind do- 
 ing a little housework, you can make a home for 
 all three of us.’ 
 
 So Amy, much to her delight, found herself re- 
 lieved from factory hours, the mistress of a room 
 and a kitchenette; and to the three were often 
 added a fourth in the person of Josephine, who 
 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING) 273 
 
 had a room elsewhere, but who was fond of drop- 
 ping in of an evening. It was a great relief to 
 Amy to be freed from the work in the mill, even 
 though she did not like housework much better. 
 In fact, it must be confessed that Amy didn’t like 
 any kind of work. She had no sentimental atti- 
 tude toward the dignity of labor. She frankly 
 loved to do nothing — to lie with a bag of candy 
 and read the movie magazines, only bestirring 
 herself when she was obliged to make a selec- 
 tion from the delicatessen for Larry’s evening 
 meal. To open a can of beans and fry a pork chop 
 for him was about all that Larry asked of her, and 
 he was not even exacting about the punctuality 
 of this repast, which was fortunate, since Amy 
 seldom got started on her preparations for supper 
 until his foot was on the stair. 
 
 The reason for his patience in this regard was 
 his abject devotion to his evening paper. Every 
 night as he started home he bought his paper on 
 the corner, climbed his stairs with anticipation, 
 and settled into his rocking-chair with a sigh of 
 content. His shoes came off, his feet were on the 
 radiator, and as he slowly and conscientiously 
 absorbed every event on the sporting pages and 
 the comic strips, he asked nothing of the world but 
 to be let alone. Surely a small thing to ask, but 
 
274. OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 it was more than Amy could supply. Amy had 
 by evening exhausted all her candy and all her 
 picture magazines, and she wanted to talk. She 
 was affectionate and wanted to be petted. Many 
 an evening Josephine had watched the scenes 
 between the two with a growing concern. 
 
 ‘Leave the guy be,’ she would whisper to Amy 
 when she was teasing Larry for a kiss or trying to 
 sit on his lap, and prevent his reading his paper. 
 ‘Just leave him be. There’s many a woman 
 would be glad to see her man in no worse mischief 
 than reading his paper.’ 
 
 ‘He ain’t my man,’ whimpered Amy. 
 
 ‘All the more reason to leave him in peace 
 until he is,’ advised Josephine dryly. 
 
 ‘Well, why can’t he talk to me?’ Amy would 
 complain. ‘I been alone all day and I’m lone- 
 some.’ 
 
 ‘Why not go back to the mill if you're so crazy 
 for a crowd?’ Josephine would inquire sardoni- 
 cally, well knowing Amy’s dislike of work. 
 
 Sometimes she would succeed in dragging Amy 
 away from her undemonstrative lover, but some- 
 times she would not succeed. And in the midst of 
 Larry’s angry but ineffectual requests to be let 
 alone, Josephine would steal away to the room of 
 Mrs. Murphy who kept the rooming-house, and 
 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING) 275 
 
 deplore Amy’s lack of judgment. ‘If she’d only 
 stop jawing the guy till she’s got the right to jaw. 
 When he’s got the divorce and she’s got the ring, 
 then it’s time enough to give him the rough stuff,’ 
 confided the anxious elder sister. 
 
 ‘That’s right,’ agreed Mrs. Murphy rocking 
 comfortably. ‘You have to talk to get ’em and 
 shut up to keep ’em. Many’s the girl I’ve said 
 that to, but there’s some can’t learn that lesson.’ 
 
 One March evening matters came to a crisis 
 between Larry and Amy, and as usual the news- 
 paper was the cause. Larry had settled himself for 
 a particularly delicious hour with his sporting 
 pages. He had been driving his truck all day in 
 the rain, and was in a mood to appreciate a good 
 dinner, a warm radiator, and the story, round by 
 round, of a prize fight on which he had both bet 
 and won. He fairly oozed anticipation as he 
 settled himself in his shirt-sleeves for his study of 
 the fight. To try to snatch this pleasure from him 
 was about as unwise as to attempt to snatch a 
 bone from a famished dog just as his teeth have 
 settled into it. But this was just what Amy had 
 determined to do, and unfortunately Josephine 
 did not happen to be there to stop her. Amy had 
 stayed indoors all day on account of a fretful 
 baby and the rain. She had not even made her 
 
276 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 usual pilgrimage to the delicatessen. She had 
 decided that they would eat at a restaurant and 
 that Larry should then take her to a dance. To 
 this end she seated herself on the arm of Larry’s 
 chair and began to tease him. In vain he tried to 
 look over her head at the story of the battle. She 
 put her hands over his eyes. He pushed her to 
 one side. She pouted that he did not love her. 
 He pushed her to the other side. She snatched the 
 paper. He tried to get it back, and in the scuffle 
 he pushed her to the floor. At this she began to 
 cry, still holding on to the paper on which she 
 sat. Larry, now thoroughly exasperated, twisted 
 her arm in order to recover his beloved pages. 
 
 ‘Go get the dinner before I get mad,’ he or- 
 dered. 
 
 ‘We're going to eat out,’ sobbed Amy loudly, 
 ‘and then you got to take me to the exhibition 
 dance at Luna.’ 
 
 ‘Take you nowhere,’ roared Larry; ‘you get 
 my dinner or you go out and earn your own.’ 
 
 ‘You couldn’t say that to me if we was mar- 
 ried!’ screamed Amy. 
 
 ‘That’s one good reason why we never will 
 be,’ answered Larry savagely, and he began with 
 no more ado to put on his coat, pull his clothes 
 from the closet, and stuff them into a suitcase. 
 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING , 277 
 
 Amy stared at him aghast. Never for a mo- 
 ment had she thought that he would really leave 
 her, although he had often threatened to. Like 
 most girls of her type she had a childish vanity 
 which made it hard for her to realize that any one 
 could really tire of her. Even then, if she had 
 shown some disposition to get Larry’s meal and 
 make him comfortable, above all, if she had kept 
 quiet, she might have kept him, and eventually 
 married him. He still longed to read his paper by 
 the warm radiator and he had no hankering to 
 face the rain again so soon. But Amy was pos- 
 sessed by the very demon of perversity. She had 
 never learned to control her feelings and had no 
 idea how to begin. She sobbed and clung to him, 
 though he pushed her off again and again. She 
 demanded that he marry her with an angry in- 
 sistence that made marriage seem to him the 
 least desirable thing in the world, and as a last 
 straw she snatched back her rival — the news- 
 paper — and tore it into shreds. This was too 
 much for Larry. He snapped the suitcase to- 
 gether and started for the hall. 
 
 ‘You going to leave me?’ gasped Amy. 
 
 ‘You bet your life lam!’ shouted Larry from the 
 door. ‘I didn’t ask much from you but some grub, 
 and a little quiet, and you won’t give me either. 
 
278 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 I’m not marrying again till I find a woman who 
 will,’ with which statement he threw some bills 
 at her, and slammed the door behind him. 
 
 There was nothing for Amy to do but to lie on 
 the floor and sob, which was where Josephine and 
 Mrs. Murphy found her when they came to call, 
 and to collect the weekly rent, respectively. 
 Between them they helped Amy up from the floor 
 and calmed her down, considerately asking no 
 questions. In fact it was quite unnecessary to 
 ask any. It required no Sherlock Holmes to de- 
 duce what had happened, especially as Mrs. 
 Murphy’s hearing was excellent, and she had 
 rather made it her business to keep track, from 
 the hall, of how the family affairs were going on. 
 ‘Rent money must come from some one, quarrels 
 or no quarrels,’ as she often remarked. ‘It pays 
 to know how the land lays.’ 
 
 ‘I suppose you'll be looking for your old job at 
 the mill again, and I might as well move my things 
 over,’ volunteered Josephine after a decent inter- 
 val — ‘that is, if you don’t think he is coming 
 back.’ 
 
 ‘He won’t come back,’ sobbed Amy with con- 
 viction. ‘He’s crazy about them baseball players. 
 I bet he’s gone South to watch ’em train.’ 
 
 ‘Well, well,’ sympathized Mrs. Murphy. ‘The 
 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING 279 
 
 fellas are likely to get restless about this time o’ 
 year. I always noticed it. Murphy would begin 
 to get his things together along in March.’ 
 
 ~ “Did he come back?’ asked Josephine. 
 
 “Not the last time he didn’t,’ answered Mrs. 
 Murphy dryly. 
 
 ‘Well, this is Larry’s last time,’ asserted Amy 
 with a flash of insight, as she wiped her eyes. 
 
 And being three women who had faced trouble 
 before, and had somehow worried through, they 
 accepted the inevitable, and arranged that Amy 
 should go back to her power machine, that 
 Josephine and Amy should keep the room to- 
 gether, and that Mrs. Murphy should look after 
 the baby for a consideration. 
 
 ‘Some one ought to pinch that guy,’ sympathized 
 Mrs. Murphy. ‘But, after all, no great harm’s 
 done,’ she added soothingly, as she creaked out of 
 the room, ‘and you’ve had a good rest.’ 
 
 The lives of the two girls had always been full 
 of upheaval and disaster, and the next year was 
 destined to be no exception. Although Amy’s 
 baby had been a source of great anxiety and ex- 
 pense, yet both girls had been devoted to him, 
 and when he died of the flu their grief was genuine, 
 and the debt they incurred for his forlorn little 
 funeral was one which they would be a long time 
 
280 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 in paying. Then Josephine, who had _ been, 
 hitherto, the quieter and more steady of the two 
 girls, had completely lost her head and her so- 
 briety for a season. She had joined in the diver- 
 sions of a reckless crowd from whose revels Amy’s 
 greater grief had fortunately restrained her, and 
 in less than two -years from Larry’s departure, 
 the situation of the two sisters had been reversed. 
 Josephine was housed with a little baby at Mrs. 
 Murphy’s rooming-house, and Amy, the easy- 
 going and pleasure-loving, was her sole support 
 from the time she left the hospital until she was 
 able to go back to her factory job. The responsi- 
 bility had brought out more strength in Amy’s 
 character than her friends supposed she had. 
 
 ‘Don’t fret,’ she said to Josephine; “I got 
 through it, and you can. He’s kindda cute, ain't 
 he?’ she added, peering into the bundle which 
 the handsome but sulky Josephine was stoically 
 rocking — ‘almost as cute as Billy was.’ She 
 made no more adverse comments on Josephine’s 
 behavior and its consequences than Josephine 
 had made on hers. Both of them took the gam- 
 bler’s attitude toward life. Both had played, and 
 hitherto both had lost. But they were still young, 
 and better luck next time. 
 
 Mrs. Murphy, who was kind-hearted despite 
 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING | 281 
 
 the fact that she had no creed in life except that of 
 punctually collecting her rent, was accustomed to 
 sit with Josephine often in the afternoons to cheer 
 her up. The sudden shift from a period of the 
 wildest of carousels to solitude in a rooming-house 
 with a little baby had completely dazed Joseph- 
 ine, and whereas she had a certain stubborn 
 pride of character to bring to the rescue, she 
 lacked Amy’s ability to rise quickly and blithely 
 from misfortune. The two women rocked back and 
 forth in the thin December sunshine and waited 
 for Amy to come in and tell them news of the 
 day. Kind as Amy had been to her sister, her kind- 
 ness was not without a certain evident satisfac- 
 tion in being for the time sole dictator in the fam- 
 ily affairs She knew that Josephine was abso- 
 lutely dependent on her, and she enjoyed the 
 freedom from her sister’s domination to which 
 she had usually submitted. As for the proud 
 Josephine, it was not easy for her to sit in silence 
 awaiting Amy’s comings and goings and accepting 
 her decisions. But without a cent in the world 
 and with a four-weeks-old baby, one learns dis- 
 cretion, so when Amy sauntered in much later 
 than usual, looking very gay and pleased with 
 herself, Josephine made no complaints over her 
 tardiness, but rocked on, giving her sister but one 
 
282 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS © 
 
 comprehensive glance, and then looking fixedly 
 out of the window. 
 
 “Been Christmas shopping with Mame,’ said 
 Amy cheerfully. ‘She got some toys for the kids, 
 and I bought a few presents myself.’ She tossed 
 her packages on the bed and warmed her hands 
 at the radiator, gazing at them critically. 4 
 
 Finally she held up her left hand to her au- 
 dience and exhibited a platinum. colored ring upon 
 it. ‘I got married to-day,’ she announced. 
 
 ‘Yes,’ said Josephine, not to be outdone in 
 nonchalance; ‘I noticed you did.’ 
 
 ‘You noticed it already? Well, why didn’t you 
 say something?’ pouted Amy, still admiring the 
 ring. 
 
 ‘It’s none of my business unless you make it 
 so,’ answered Josephine, shrugging her shoulders. 
 
 As for Mrs. Murphy, she rocked on in silence. 
 She would know all in due time. 
 
 Amy leaned against the radiator and gave the 
 two other women a sidelong glance. ‘He’s an 
 ugly little runt. He’s a wop,’ she finally ventured. 
 
 ‘A wop?’ echoed Josephine. There was an in- 
 terval of silence, and then her curiosity got the 
 better of her. She stopped rocking and stared at 
 her sister. ‘If you’re married, where is he?’ she 
 asked suspiciously. ‘I’ll bet you’re kidding us.’ 
 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING  ° 283 
 
 ‘No, I ain’t. On the level I’m married. He’s 
 back in the shop. I told him there was no use 
 in wasting a whole afternoon to get married in. 
 Besides, I wanted to go shopping with Mame. 
 The stores look swell just before Christmas.’ 
 
 ‘Some dagoes make good money,’ finally re- 
 marked Mrs. Murphy, ‘but they’re usually tight 
 with it.’ 
 
 ‘Well, that’s all settled,’ answered Amy. ‘He 
 takes Josephine and the baby if he takes me, and I 
 quit the factory. He’s said that before witnesses. 
 His name’s Tony — Tony Firmenti.’ 
 
 ‘That’s a hard name to remember,’ commented 
 the landlady. 
 
 ‘It is at first,’ apologized Amy, ‘but just say to 
 yourself — he ain’t spoiled, he’s only fermented, 
 and that helps. That’s what I do.’ 
 
 It turned out that Tony was a pastry cook, 
 past his first youth, with an eye for beauty which 
 Amy satisfied. The affair had not been entered 
 upon rashly — that was the amazing part of it. 
 For Josephine. under the circumstances, to show 
 a calculating disposition would have surprised 
 no one, but for the demonstrative and scatter- 
 brained Amy to arrange her marriage with an eye 
 solely to the main chance showed that, whether 
 for good or ill, life had taught her a few lessons., 
 
284 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 She had met Tony in his own shop, had seen at a 
 glance that he had material benefits to offer, and 
 had made up her mind that he should offer them 
 to her. This the susceptible Tony had cheerfully 
 done. It must be said in her defense that neither 
 she nor her sister had ever in their lives (outside of 
 the movies) witnessed a single happy marriage in 
 which love and a fair amount of comfort were 
 combined. Their tempestuous lives had vibrated 
 between ‘homes,’ domestic friction, and sordid 
 romance, and both of them were unconscious 
 cynics in the matter. Marriage, like old age, 
 seemed from their observation to be an inevitable 
 drab ending to the dangerous gayety of youth. 
 It would be charming if one could ever hold 
 one’s sweetheart, either before or after marriage. 
 But since one seldom did, then one must do the 
 next best thing, and marry some one else as pain- 
 lessly and comfortably as possible. So Amy, after 
 some anxious speculation before the glass, as to 
 how long her good looks would last, had decided 
 that she would better settle down at once, and she 
 had also decided that Josephine should settle down 
 with her. She gave up romance as a youthful 
 dream, and chose instead the substantial status of 
 married life, a house, a shop, a middle-aged hus- 
 band, and even a mother-in-law. 
 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING _ 285 
 
 ‘He’s a Catholic, so I turned,’ she went on. 
 ‘The Pope lives over there, they say.’ 
 
 ‘It’s a good religion,’ nodded Mrs. Murphy. 
 ‘Murphy was a Catholic, and my first was a Jew. 
 Heaven and Hell is full of both, I guess. I’ve had 
 all kinds as roomers, and they’re about alike.’ 
 
 ‘IT went in a church and saw them do it,’ mused 
 Amy. ‘It don’t look hard to do if you get used to 
 it. Will you turn Catholic, too, if I get you a good 
 man?’ she asked her sister. 
 
 ‘I’d try anything once,’ answered Josephine 
 with a grim smile. 
 
 ‘It’s much harder to learn to cook than to say 
 your prayers a new way,’ said Mrs. Murphy 
 sagaciously. ‘You ain’t so strong on cooking, 
 Amy, as I remember it.’ 
 
 ‘Spaghetti and snails is all they eat, I’ve heard,’ 
 giggled the bride. ‘Anyhow, Tony’s a cook.’ 
 
 ‘They’ll be here any minute— I most forgot,’ 
 she said, looking at the clock. Then, standing in 
 front of her sister, she added decisively, ‘Jo- 
 sephine, your husband was killed in a railroad 
 wreck last fall — do you get that? Tony’s bring- 
 ing his brother with him for a little party, and we 
 got to say something to explain the kid.’ 
 
 ‘He must be a dumb-bell if you can fool him 
 with that old gag,’ answered Josephine dryly. 
 
286 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS — 
 
 ‘They won’t stand for the kid, wreck or no 
 wreck,’ 
 
 ‘Yes, they will, they got to,’ said Amy stub- 
 bornly. ‘Foreigners like kids and they like red 
 hair — you'll get by with Frank all right. That 
 sounds like them now,’ and leaning over she 
 whispered with, slight embarrassment — ‘Don’t 
 laugh when you first see them —they’re not so 
 bad even if you can hear their neckties a block 
 away. 
 
 ‘Some dagoes are swell-looking fellas,’ said Mrs. 
 Murphy politely. 
 
 ‘Well, Tony ain’t. That’s a cinch,’ returned 
 Amy with great positiveness, and at that point 
 there was a loud knock on the door and Amy 
 opened it to two very short, swarthy Italians, in 
 bright blue suits and shiny shoes. Both of them 
 carried large bundles and both of their faces 
 showed a wide expanse of very white teeth. They 
 laid their bundles on the table, and then one, ob- 
 viously Tony, put his arm around Amy, and 
 beamed on the company. 
 
 ‘Ain’t I got the pretty wife?’ he asked. ‘Ain’t 
 she pretty enough for two?’ 
 
 Frank and Mrs. Murphy smiled sympatheti- 
 cally. ‘Sure she is,’ answered the genial landlady, 
 and then seeing that Amy and Josephine, having 
 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING _ 287 
 
 caught each other’s eye, were about to go off into 
 a spasm of nervous giggles over the somewhat 
 grotesque brothers, she came to the rescue. 
 ‘Amy, you forgot your manners —ain’t you 
 going to introduce us? I’m Mrs. Murphy, and 
 pleased to meet you,’ she said, shaking hands. 
 
 Amy made a last effort to pull herself together. 
 ‘And this is my sister Jo. Her name is Mrs. — 
 Wreck — and her husband was wrecked — in a 
 wreck.’ 
 
 At this both girls gave up the struggle and 
 shook helplessly with hysterical laughter. The 
 amiable grooms fortunately were too good- 
 natured to mind any hilarity, and laughed loudly 
 in sympathy, although they were obviously ig- 
 norant of what they were laughing at. 
 
 With Mrs. Murphy’s help they undid the pack- 
 ages which disclosed a large frosted cake, some 
 bread and sausage, and some soda pop. Then they 
 stood back and surveyed the result with some 
 pride. 
 
 ‘That’s a Christmas party all right, ain’t it?’ 
 inquired Tony. ‘Ain’t some one going to drink 
 our health now we got married?’ he asked the 
 company. He uncorked the bottles and passed 
 them around. 
 
 ‘Ain’t you going to drink to our health, Jo? 
 
288 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 Can’t you make a toast?’ asked Amy, but her 
 voice trembled, and Josephine was on the verge of 
 tears. 
 
 The change in their destinies had been too 
 sudden. Half an hour before she was a penniless 
 girl alone in a rooming-house, rocking a baby 
 whom no one wanted, and too dazed by the pro- 
 blem of how to feed it and herself to make one plan. 
 Now, by a turn of fortune’s wheel, a dull domestic 
 haven stretched in front of her, soon doubtless to 
 be shared by Frank or some one like him — 
 respectability, monotony, the beginning of safety, 
 and the end of romance. Youth was over, and 
 middle age had set in. Even Amy’s nerves were 
 shaky under the strain, and as for Jo, she had 
 recently gone through too great a shock to bear 
 much more. She was in no condition to face this 
 crisis with any poise, much less with courage or 
 good judgment. It was plain that she could not 
 even speak. She gazed in front of her as into a 
 yawning pit, and the sympathetic Italians, re- 
 membering her dead husband, nodded soothingly 
 and murmured, ‘Too bad. That’s all right.’ 
 
 Again Mrs. Murphy came to the rescue. ‘Some 
 one’s got to drink your health. I’ll do it,’ she said. 
 ‘Here’s to you two fine fellas. May the second 
 wedding follow not long after the first. And 
 
THE CHRISTMAS WEDDING ~ 289 
 
 here’s to Amy, and Josephine, who’s been through 
 a peck of trouble, but who has past them now. 
 They’re going to have a Merry Christmas and 
 plenty of them. Merry Christmas I say to every- 
 body.’ 
 
 ‘That’s a swell toast, Mrs. Murphy,’ said Amy, 
 her eyes wet. ‘Come on, Jo,’ putting her arm 
 around her and drawing her into the circle; ‘ Mrs. 
 Murphy’s about right. It ain’t so bad as it looks. 
 It might be a lot worse. Our troubles are going to 
 end. Tony and Frank are good guys. They Il 
 treat us swell. Merry Christmas and Happy New 
 Year — everybody.’ 
 
 ‘That’s the way to talk,’ said Mrs. Murphy 
 comfortably. 
 
 ‘Brava! Brava!’ echoed Tony and Frank as 
 they drained their glasses. 
 
at: 
 
 ath 
 
 PRs 
 4 i) ia } 
 i a nic itr 
 
 pee ee 
 x » 4 
 
 i dae 
 
 
 
XVI 
 SEVEN P.M. 
 
SEVEN P.M. 
 
 Fatigue — exhaustion of strength caused by 
 excessive exertion. If fatigue is abnormally con- 
 tinued, the nervous system goes through a stage 
 of heightened sensitivity, when it is affected by 
 stimuli which would be relatively unimportant at 
 other times. People who are in a continual state 
 of overfatigue, and who are unable to recuperate 
 by the usual means of quiet, privacy, and change 
 of scene, become chronically irritable. 
 
XVI 
 SEVEN P.M. 
 
 Mrs. NYACK stood beside the stove on a hot May 
 evening poking the pork chops doubtfully with a 
 fork and holding on to her cheek. It was the end 
 of a particularly wearing week. The kitchen was 
 hot, the other three rooms were hot, and every 
 one was late. Mrs. Nyack had been waiting for 
 the whole family for over an hour, alternately 
 heating up the chops as she thought that she 
 heard her husband’s step upon the stairs, then 
 turning out the gas again, and applying the oil of 
 cloves to her tooth. The later Mr. Nyack and 
 Joe arrived, the more likely they were to demand 
 their dinner the instant they opened the door. 
 Both men did hard manual labor and were furi- 
 ously hungry when they came home. They could 
 hardly be blamed for wanting their dinner and 
 wanting it at once. On the other hand, if their 
 arrival varied by an hour, how could they expect 
 their meals to be ready on the dot? Both the 
 appetite of the men and the inability of Mrs. 
 Nyack to appease it instantly at an uncertain 
 hour were reasonable. But the Nyacks were sel- 
 dom reasonable at six P.M. and never at seven. 
 
294 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 The first to arrive was May. She worked at a 
 box factory, and had her Saturday afternoons off. 
 This year for the first time she had spent her 
 Saturdays as she saw fit. Until she was sixteen, 
 she had given up her holiday to the weekly clean- 
 ing of the four rooms of the Nyack apartment. 
 This spring she had announced that, since she gave 
 seven dollars of her weekly thirteen toward the 
 family budget, she would not give her Saturday 
 afternoons. ‘You take that or nothing,’ was her 
 ultimatum; ‘and if you crab, I’ll leave like Louisa.’ 
 
 This was a serious threat. Louisa was the eld- 
 est child and she had worked for three years in a 
 printer’s office, Her mother had always insisted 
 on taking her entire pay envelope, although 
 Louisa had protested bitterly, but in vain. So she 
 bided her time. On her eighteenth birthday had 
 occurred the great emancipation proclamation in 
 the Nyack family. Louisa had removed herself 
 and her belongings to a rooming-house, and it 
 developed that in this strange country no law 
 could force her to come home again. An occa- 
 sional bill she gave her mother for old times’ sake, 
 and she often paid visits at meal-times — meals 
 for which she scrupulously paid. But to come 
 back and live with her family, she refused. Since 
 May still lived at home, she knew that she owed 
 
SEVEN P.M. 295 
 
 her family something, but she did not propose to 
 have her mother issue back to her at her own 
 discretion the money which she had _ herself 
 earned. Nor would she allow her mother to spend 
 it for her. The Nyack tradition for generations 
 had been that children, before their marriage, 
 owed all their earnings to their parents. The 
 generation now coming on disagreed with this 
 precedent, and insisted upon doing as it chose. 
 So, although the children and their parents loved 
 each other, relations were somewhat strained. 
 
 Now, as it turned out, May had had her Sat- 
 urday afternoon, but it had not been successful. 
 Bud Bryan, who for three successive Saturdays 
 had waited for her on the drug-store corner, in 
 order to accompany her to Dreamland Park, had 
 not kept his tryst to-day. May had gone to the 
 park with a crowd of girls, and on the dance floor 
 there was Bud, dancing with the girl who took 
 the tickets at the movie theater. This was a 
 severe blow. To see her ‘steady’ dancing with an 
 overdressed blonde in red shoes took the sunshine 
 out of life. In fact, it robbed life itself of any rea- 
 son for being. All that May could do, she had 
 done. 
 
 She left the park in a rage, and spent five dollars 
 for some green King Tut sandals, with green silk 
 
296 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS » 
 
 stockings to match. She would show Bud whether 
 she or the theatrical blonde was the ‘classier’ 
 dresser. But when May entered the kitchen 
 where Mrs. Nyack’s flushed face shone over the 
 frying-pan, she braced herself for the storm. 
 Useless to explain to her mother why green san- 
 dals were necessary. 
 
 ‘You take them things off!’ ordered her mother, 
 the moment her impatient eyes fell on May’s feet. 
 ‘You spending money on fancy truck, and me 
 with my teeth, and all!’ she shouted. ‘You take 
 them off, I say!’ 
 
 ‘If I take them off, I take myself off!’ May 
 shouted back. 
 
 ‘You crook!’ screamed her mother in exas- 
 peration. 
 
 ‘Shut your face,’ answered May, in the same 
 key. , 
 
 The argument continued in this pitch until the 
 door opened and Louisa stepped in. 
 
 ‘Any eats to-night?’ she inquired, laying a 
 dollar bill ostentatiously upon the table. 
 
 She listened to the last reverberations of May’s 
 “shut-ups.’ 
 
 ‘Still quarreling, I see,’ she observed with a 
 shrug; and then, ‘You can stop your mouths, 
 right now, or me and my dollar takes a walk,’ she 
 
SEVEN P.M. 297 
 
 added, and her hand started toward the bill. Her 
 mother’s hand, however, reached it first. 
 
 ‘Well, look at them green legs,’ cried Mrs. 
 Nyack, ‘and ask why I’m jawing, and me with 
 my face aching all the week.’ 
 
 She was almost in tears, but she knew already 
 that her case was lost. She saw May glance at 
 Louisa and heard her sneer, ‘Better take your 
 dollar and ramble, old thing; same old hole.’ 
 
 Their mother knew that if she said another word 
 Louisa, and probably May, would both be off. 
 Her hand tightened on the dollar. She needed it 
 toward the new teeth, and, besides that, Louisa 
 was her daughter and she wanted to see her. So 
 she gulped down her sobs and the wrath which 
 the wanton green slippers aroused in her, and 
 turned on the gas again. 
 
 By this time Mr. Nyack was on the threshold 
 with his dinner pail. He had wielded a pick in the 
 hot sun for nine hours, the perspiration had made 
 paths through the dirt on his face, hunger clawed 
 at his vitals like a gnawing fox — and here were 
 his three women having words with each other, 
 and the meat not on the table. 
 
 ‘Dry up, you damned women!’ he roared. And 
 because of some remnants of fatherly authority, 
 or because they thought his advice was sound, 
 
298 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 they did stop their clamor, and drew up their 
 chairs. 
 
 ‘You sit down, ma,’ said May, ready to make 
 amends, ‘I'll dish it up,’ and she placed the plates 
 of chops and potatoes, again reheated over the 
 gas, before the family. 
 
 ‘Leave some for Joe,’ sighed her mother, ‘and 
 give me my coffee. I can’t chew.’ 
 
 She was glad to sit down, even though the 
 meals were only an aggravation to her at this 
 stage of her dentistry. 
 
 Mrs. Nyack had put off getting her false teeth 
 as long as she could, both on account of the ex- 
 pense and because she had refused to consider her 
 teeth all her life, and she hated to begin. When 
 her first child had come home from school, with a 
 small card on which was printed — ‘I promise to 
 brush my teeth every day,’ and had pinned it over 
 the sink, she was mystified. And when the young 
 enthusiast proceeded to fly at the inside of her 
 mouth with a small brush, the mother was horri- 
 fied. She tolerated any such ceremony in her 
 kitchen only because she was more in awe of the 
 public school teacher than she was of the Pope. 
 In every previous encounter with the school 
 system she had been worsted, and she knew that 
 she would be in this. So she kept silence, but she 
 
SEVEN P.M. 299 
 
 was utterly unconvinced. As her successive chil- 
 dren came home with ridiculous little brushes, 
 she accepted the mania only as one more feature 
 of an unaccountable country. 
 
 ‘They'll be taking a broom to their stummicks 
 next,’ she confided to her husband, who was as 
 much bewildered by the performance as she. 
 Although the parents could not stop their chil- 
 dren, both of them resolutely declined to join in 
 the obscene rite themselves. Now at forty, Mrs. 
 Nyack was parting with her last teeth after weeks 
 of torture. Every one lost teeth at forty, as a 
 matter of course. That she accepted as part of 
 life. But twenty-five dollars for an American set 
 was indeed an expense which demanded all the 
 help which the children could give. And here were 
 ereen shoes, and Louisa ready to walk off with her 
 dollar unless her mother kept quiet. She sighed 
 heavily over her coffee. All the family contrary, 
 and she with only the strength of a week of ‘spoon- 
 food’ to help her keep the peace. 
 
 ‘I’ve got a new job,’ announced Louisa, amid the 
 silence of the dinner table. ‘The printing trade is 
 too dirty and no raise in sight. I heard about 
 a swell job from a fella who got his printing done 
 at our place. It’s pressed-aluminum-household- 
 utensils,’ she rattled off all in one word, as in- 
 
300 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 comprehensible to the rest of them as if she spoke 
 in Arabic. ‘TI start in next Monday with the firm 
 — canvassing,’ she went on. ‘He says you makea 
 lot of money on it too — salary and commission 
 on the raffles.’ | 
 
 ‘On the raffles?’ asked May. ‘What raffles?’ 
 
 ‘The raffles of the pressed-aluminum-household- 
 utensils,’ said Louisa. ‘You go to the house and 
 get the lady to give you her kitchen. Then you 
 give her a meal cooked in the never-burn kettles, 
 and then you raffle off the kettles to her after 
 she’s eat the dinner. The fella says you make a 
 lotta money if you work it right.’ 
 
 ‘Sounds good,’ said May. ‘Any chance for me? 
 I've got a place to hash at a hot-dog booth myself, 
 but this sounds better. I’m tired of the factory,’ 
 and she thought of the faithless Bud. It seemed to 
 her that never again could she face the girls in 
 her section, who had witnessed her discomfiture 
 on the Dreamland dance floor. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Nyack had not the slightest idea 
 of what this talk was about. Aluminum-raffles 
 in other people’s kitchens —it meant nothing 
 to them. But money was an idea which they 
 cguld grasp. 
 
 ‘How much more do you make?’ asked Mr. 
 Nyack. 
 
SEVEN P.M. 201 
 
 ‘What’s the commission?’ demanded Joe, who 
 had just come in. 
 
 ‘Who pays for the dinner?’ inquired May. 
 
 ‘Who cooks the dinner?’ murmured Mrs. Ny- 
 ack faintly. ‘You ain’t much of a cook, Louisa.’ 
 
 And then too late she saw her mistake. Louisa 
 rose from the table in wrath. 
 
 ‘I didn’t come home to answer questions,’ she 
 said angrily. ‘You don’t understand what I tell 
 you, so what’s the use of tellin’? I pay my own 
 bills, don’t I? Task you for nothing, do I? Doya 
 think this dinner was worth the dollar I gave you? 
 Can’t I cook as well as this if I have to? Couldn’t 
 I have got the same for thirty-five cents down- 
 town, and gone to a show beside?’ she asked, her 
 voice rising. 
 
 As a matter of fact, she was rather hazy on the 
 details of her pressed-aluminum venture herself, 
 but she had no idea of letting them guess it. She 
 was very proud of her independence and her 
 cleverness. She intended to dazzle them with her 
 new job, but she had no idea of having it ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 May, glad to have attention diverted from her 
 green shoes, made no effort to quell the rising 
 storm, but Joe, who had been quietly eating his 
 dinner, with a mysterious package by his side, felt 
 
302 OTHER PEOPLE's DAUGHTERS 
 
 that the time had now come to produce it. Joe 
 was an odd combination of a working-man and 
 asmall boy. He was a heavy good-looking fellow 
 of nineteen, but heedless as a child. He was his 
 mother’s favorite. He did hauling for a green- 
 house which for the last two weeks had been 
 plastered with the sign — ‘Say it with flowers to 
 Mother on Mothers’ Day.’ This sign had been 
 the subject of considerable discussion among the 
 men during their lunch hour, and Joe, who was 
 really fond of his mother, had had his chivalry 
 stirred. He would make his mother a present. He 
 had, however, no idea of saying it with flowers. 
 To pay good money for flowers is something no 
 Nyack would do except for a burial. But there 
 was something else he decided to say it with, and, 
 unable in his eagerness to wait until the morrow, 
 he shoved a large package onto the table, toward 
 his mother. Louisa might as well see that she was 
 not the only one with big ideas. And as for May 
 and her green slippers — his chest swelled to 
 think how much more generous he was than she. 
 ‘Two bucks,’ he murmured in‘an aside to May, 
 but his father heard it. 
 ‘Two bucks?’ he echoed with a puzzled frown. 
 As for Mrs. Nyack, she stared at the bundle 
 without speaking. It was too large to be teeth, 
 
SEVEN P.M. 303 
 
 and what else would her children be wasting 
 ‘two bucks’ on, with that dentist bill to pay? 
 As for Mothers’ Day she had never heard of it. 
 She was entirely unaccustomed to any sentimental 
 attitude toward motherhood, and the gallant de- 
 sire in Joe’s breast to ‘say it with something,’ in 
 emulation of the well-dressed American men who 
 came to the greenhouse, was something she was 
 incapable of understanding. She was so tired and 
 worried by the vagaries of Louisa and May that 
 she felt that she could stand nothing more, but 
 she undid the strings doubtfully, and opened 
 with caution the two boxes which lay within. 
 She raised the lid of one box and then of the other 
 and gazed at the contents with stupefaction — 
 
 Caramels. Not one box, but two. _ 
 
 ‘Two bucks’ for two boxes of tough chewing 
 candy which made her jaws ache to look at, and 
 which made her heart sick when she thought of 
 the wasted money — Then, instead of her heart 
 sinking, her anger rose. Selfish children, all of 
 them. Or were they teasing her? Or were they 
 going crazy? She rose from the table and thrust 
 out her forefinger at Joe. 
 
 ‘So you spend your money on muck I can’t eat, 
 and call it a present, do you?’ she cried, her color 
 rising with her voice. ‘Where is the money you 
 
304 OTHER PEOPLE'S DAUGHTERS 
 
 owe me? Did them boxes cost you two bucks, 
 you young liar? You know they didn’t. You 
 gambled away your money and stole the boxes, 
 you crook. The police will be here next, and me 
 always an honest woman,’ she screamed, too worn 
 out and hysterical to notice the utterly crest- 
 fallen look on her son’s face. 
 
 For a moment he looked as if he would cry 
 with disappointment, and Louisa, who had al- 
 ways babied Joe more or less, hastily interposed 
 — ‘Oh, Ma, shut up,’ she said. ‘That’s on the 
 straight. They cost that much. It’s a swell 
 present. That’s right, to-morrow is Mothers’ 
 Day,’ she added soothingly. 
 
 But Mothers’ Day meant nothing to Mrs. 
 Nyack, or to Mr. Nyack either. He turned on 
 his son in enraged astonishment. 
 
 ‘So you're lifting boxes and gambling away your 
 money, are you?’ he shouted, and then he added, 
 from sheer nervousness and from long habit, the 
 most opprobrious epithet that one man can give 
 another. Joe rose to his feet like a cat and picked 
 up his chair by the back. The others rose with him. 
 
 Obviously, if Joe was what his father called 
 him, it was his mother who was demeaned by 
 the epithet. Such an accusation was more than 
 speech. It was violence. And from a husband to 
 
SEVEN P.M. 305 
 
 his son, before his wife — it was almost murder. 
 Of course, Mr. Nyack had meant nothing of the 
 kind. He and his wife had had their daily quarrels, 
 to be sure. But he knew well enough that she 
 had been entirely faithful to him and to his in- 
 terests. His epithet to his son had been merely 
 a manner of speaking. It had slipped out, with 
 no reference to its meaning, because Mr. Nyack 
 was tired and cross, and his children seemed to 
 be smothering him with their outlandish whims. 
 But when he saw his two daughters rising from 
 the table against him, backed by an hysterical 
 wife, and a son ready to throw a chair at him, it 
 entirely destroyed what self-restraint he had left 
 after so wearing a day. He grasped his own chair 
 aloft and threw it blindly. It hit the stovepipe, 
 knocking it clear from the wall, and distributing 
 the soot over the table and over the heads of the 
 three screaming women. 
 
 Joe, his feelings a blind mixture of hurt pride, 
 chagrin over his ill-chosen present, his realization 
 that his mother could not be made to understand 
 his motive, and wild wrath over his father’s un- 
 just epithet, flew at his father and pinned him 
 to the floor by his throat. He began choking him 
 so successfully that Mrs. Nyack, unable to bear 
 more, gave a wild shriek and fell unconscious over 
 
306 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 the table. Louisa and May gave one horrified 
 and disgusted glance at each other. Then Louisa 
 clawed at Joe’s throat, as the only available spot 
 of attack where she could hope to weaken his grip 
 on his father, and May, catching a pail of water 
 from the kitchen sink, threw it impartially over 
 all of them. By this time the clamor had risen to 
 such a height that the neighbors were collecting 
 outside the door. 
 
 ‘Help! Help!’ screamed May, ready to fly into 
 hysterics herself, as she saw that the soot and 
 water between them had effectually devastated 
 the green sandals for all time. 
 
 A crowd of neighbors pushed the door open at 
 this cry, and Joe, his ardor somewhat cooled by 
 the water and by the presence of the newcomers, 
 rose sulkily to his feet. His father, after some pre- 
 liminary grunts and snorts, did the same. In the 
 shame-faced silence which followed, May elbowed 
 her way through the crowd and into the street. 
 
 ‘It’s the last night I spend with these devils,’ 
 she called back to Louisa. 
 
 She marched out holding her head very high, con- 
 scious that the bystanders were tittering slightly 
 over the mixture of soot and green dye with 
 which she was plastered. She knew a place where 
 she could go and fix herself up, and a fellow who 
 
SEVEN P.M. 307 
 
 would give her some swell shoes. She had been 
 shy about taking favors from him before, espe- 
 cially since she preferred Bud. But any place but 
 home was the way she now felt, and any source for 
 shoes since her new ones had been ruined. What 
 did anything matter after such humiliation? 
 
 ‘I'm through with the damned hole myself,’ 
 muttered Joe, as he slouched out of the door in 
 the wake of his sister. 
 
 Once in the street he turned in a different direc- 
 tion, toward the freight yards. He, too, knew 
 where he could go. 
 
 Louisa, being the eldest, felt some slight 
 responsibility toward her mother until she at least 
 recovered speech, and toward her father until she 
 was sure that he would not be arrested. As for 
 May or Joe, she knew from her own experience 
 that they would take no advice from her, so she 
 let them alone. When her parents had both re- 
 covered themselves enough to sit up and explain 
 matters volubly to the neighbors, Louisa gave a 
 slight shrug of disgust at the unclean room sud- 
 denly become abhorrent to her, and slipped 
 quietly out of the back door. 
 
 The aluminum-kettle raffles did not turn out 
 very well. One thing led to another until Louisa 
 and the manager of the enterprise were obliged 
 
308 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 to flee from the State together to escape the law. 
 They did not come back. Neither did Joe. He 
 sends out-of-the-way postcards to his mother from 
 time to time. He seems to be in the navy, but 
 his mother is not sure. She has not seen him since 
 that night. 
 
 As for May, she calls on her mother now and 
 then with very handsome shoes and stockings, 
 and she gives her parents a substantial present 
 every Christmas. 
 
 They cannot understand where she gets the 
 money and they shake their heads over the vague 
 accounts which she gives of herself. But what can 
 they do? They are glad to get the presents, for 
 they need the money, and they are much too 
 humbled by their children to dare to ask any 
 inconvenient questions. The Battle of Bosworth 
 Field was lost to King Richard, they tell us, all for 
 the want of a horseshoe nail. The Battle of the 
 Nyacks was lost by all parties to the conflict. 
 None came out victorious. And why? Because 
 all of the combatants were much too tired to be 
 reasonable at seven P.M. 
 
XVII 
 JUST LIKE STEVE 
 
JUST LIKE STEVE 
 
 Education is the sum of the qualities acquired 
 through individual instruction and social train- 
 ing. All education consists of habit-formation, 
 and begins so young that in most cases people 
 continue to live according to their earliest nurture 
 and ideals. Successful teachers are those who 
 capture the admiration of their followers, and who 
 teach them when their mental development is 
 ripe for their instruction. The fact that their 
 teaching may be vicious in no way impairs its 
 efficacy. The traditions of anti-social conduct are 
 passed on by the same educational technique 
 which operates in the soundest training. 
 
XVII 
 JUST LIKE STEVE 
 
 THE brains in the Boushka family came by way of 
 Mike, who, with his wife and two children, 
 migrated to try his fortunes in the New World. 
 But Mike soon succumbed to American industry 
 in its tubercular form, taking his brains with 
 him, and leaving in the person of his widow 
 as ineffective a guardian for Mamie and Nicky 
 as ever a man selected for his children. Mrs. 
 Boushka’s one flash of good judgment was to 
 send for Mike’s old mother, from whom he had 
 presumably inherited his ability, and she, patheti- 
 cally pleased still to be of use in the world, kept 
 the house for the family and two roomers, leaving 
 few duties for the younger woman but to sit 
 heavily by and collect the room rent. Granny did 
 what bringing-up of the children she could in the 
 intervals of her housework, but, knowing nothing 
 of the language, or of any customs but those of a 
 Slavish village, her discipline was not very effec- 
 tive, and Mamie and Nicky played in the alleys 
 like young outlaws, teasing their heavy-eyed 
 mother into fretful scoldings, and dazzling old 
 
312: OTHER PEOPLES DAUGHTERS 
 
 Granny with their knowledge of the world. It is 
 not very good for a girl of fifteen and a boy of 
 thirteen to be brought up solely by a lazy mother, 
 an overworked grandmother, and a neighborhood 
 gang, and the effect of this training on their be- 
 havior was about what one would expect. 
 
 It had even penetrated Mrs. Boushka’s sleepy 
 intelligence that something had better be done 
 with Mamie or she would get them into trouble. 
 Boys, she felt, could take care of themselves. 
 Mrs. Boushka sat by the kitchen table on which 
 were stacked the dishes of the day, ready for 
 Mamie to wash when she came home from school. 
 Granny crouched on the woodbox resting her old 
 bones after collecting kindlings down by the 
 packing-houses. 
 
 ‘Where are the kids?’ inquired their mother. 
 ‘School oughtta been out long ago. Mamie 
 oughtta be here washing them dishes.’ 
 
 ‘She’d rather sit in school reading the books 
 than come home and do dirty work. Fine ladies 
 don’t like it,’ cackled the old lady. 
 
 ‘Sure. That’s what comes of schoolin’,’ agreed 
 Mrs. Boushka. ‘Readin’ and writin’. What does 
 she read? And what does she write? She’d oughtta 
 get married. Kids like Mamie are better off 
 married — she’s most sixteen.’ 
 
JUST LIKE STEVE a1 
 
 Granny agreed with some misgivings. ‘But 
 girls don’t want husbands like they used to. A 
 husband don’t want a book-reader. He wants a 
 cook, and Mamie can’t cook. Mr. Lusky here, he 
 likes a good soup.’ 
 
 Mrs. Boushka nodded—‘But he likes Mamie 
 too. He’s got a good cigar-store. Mamie could 
 sell cigars. What you think, Granny?’ 
 
 Granny paused with still further misgivings, 
 and then answered what she knew was the real, 
 and not the apparent, question. ‘Girls like the 
 young fellas. They don’t like old boys like Lusky. 
 I used to like the young fellas.’ She leaned back 
 and chuckled in toothless reminiscence. ‘Remem- 
 ber young Timothy, him that used to thresh on 
 old Nikos’s threshing floor? Timothy’s father 
 and grandfather, they were young fellas, those 
 fellas were! The girls don’t know what young 
 fellas are nowadays. Well! Well! Well!’ she 
 clucked to herself, ‘Lusky’s all right,’ — at which 
 point the door opened and the stout proprietor of 
 the cigar-store, of whom they spoke, entered, sat 
 down with his hat on, and his collar off, and asked 
 where Mamie was. 
 
 The two women winked at each other. 
 
 “Never too old to love!’ shriecked the old 
 lady. 
 
314. OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘Mamie’s a good kid, ain’t she?’ simpered 
 Lusky. ‘And I ain’t so old.’ He pushed up his 
 sleeve and exhibited his biceps, at which all of 
 them laughed loudly, utterly ignoring the appear- 
 ance of Steve, the other roomer, who had also 
 entered in the meantime and seated himself in 
 the remaining chair. His presence was plainly 
 not wanted. He was young, on the pattern of 
 what is known popularly as a ‘sheik,’ and he and 
 his landlady and Lusky exchanged glances of 
 mutual disgust. 
 
 ‘Sure, Mamie’s a good kid,’ Steve observed, 
 joining unasked into the conversation. ‘Too good 
 for an old sport like you.’ 
 
 Mrs. Boushka glared at this intruder into her 
 plans. ‘You gotta job yet?’ she asked icily. ‘I'll 
 need the room rent on Friday.’ 
 
 ‘You'll get it, don’t you worry,’ Steve answered 
 with a contemptuous gesture. 
 
 ‘T don’t know where you get it,’ answered Mrs. 
 Boushka, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Mr. Lusky 
 here, he’s got a good business. You don’t need 
 Mamie in your store, do you?’ she asked, turning 
 to Lusky. ‘Mamie’s good in school. She can 
 write and figure swell.’ 
 
 ‘Sure, I need a smart young kid in the store. 
 I was going to ask about Mamie’ — at which 
 
JUST LIKE STEVE 315 
 
 point the door opened and both children burst in 
 shouting with laughter. | 
 
 They danced around the room shrieking with 
 excitement, and dragging after them what turned 
 out to be chickens on the end of two strings. 
 Mamie with a gray chicken capered after Nicky 
 with a black one, and the adults stared in un- 
 comprehending astonishment as the chickens were 
 dragged around the table, till old Granny threw 
 up her apron and began to laugh. 
 
 ‘Little bandits! I’ve seen them steal geese that 
 way in the mountains and get shot for it too. 
 Granny’ll make a stew for the little bandits.’ 
 
 Steve, grasping the game, gave an appreciative 
 snort, but to Lusky and Mrs. Boushka the matter 
 had to be explained. 
 
 ‘We didn’t steal ’em,’ said Nicky; ‘we just 
 dragged our strings with corn on the end, and it 
 ain’t our fault, is it, if they got greedy and swal- 
 lowed ’em? You’d oughtta seen them come 
 stepping along when they’d swallowed the corn 
 and we pulled the strings.’ And the two children 
 goose-stepped ludicrously in imitation of the hap- 
 less chickens so that even the slow-witted Lusky 
 was obliged to laugh. 
 
 ‘T’ll put a bay leaf in the stew,’ cackled Granny. 
 
 ‘And an onion,’ advised Lusky. 
 
316 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 “Who asked you to eat our stew? They’re our 
 chickens,’ answered Mamie pertly; adding with a 
 shy glance, ‘Steve can have some of my chicken.’ 
 This under the circumstances was, of course, a 
 most unfortunate remark to make. 
 
 Mrs. Boushka leaned over and twitched Mamie’s 
 armangrily. ‘You give that chicken to Granny and 
 you wash them dishes,’ she snapped. ‘Mamie’s 
 a good little housekeeper,’ she explained eagerly, 
 turning to Lusky. ‘But girls are silly and need 
 some one to handle them.’ 
 
 It was plain enough to her audience whose 
 handling she considered would be suitable for 
 Mamie. Lusky assumed a self-conscious air, 
 Mamie’s color heightened, and she turned her 
 back saucily on her elderly admirer as she went 
 at the dishes. Steve gave the company a cynical 
 glance, and even Granny looked uncomfortable. 
 She and her friends had all been married as a 
 matter of course at sixteen, and to older men of 
 means, instead of young ne’er-do-wells, if sucha 
 match could be managed by their elders. She had 
 no logical complaint against her daughter-in-law, 
 if she pursued the same method which had united 
 her to the excellent Mike. Nevertheless, a vague 
 presentiment told the old lady, whose feelings 
 were fairly acute, that the system would not work 
 
JUST LIKE STEVE B17 
 
 with Mamie as it had worked with her, and that 
 her granddaughter would not relinquish her hold 
 upon the Steves of her day, as she herself had 
 dutifully bade farewell to the Timothys of her 
 own. 
 
 The awkward pause was broken by Steve —‘I 
 seen something like that chicken stunt in a show. 
 A Rube turn it was.’ 
 
 ‘That’s where I seen it,’ giggled Nicky, looking 
 doubtfully at his mother. ‘That’s why I tried it.’ 
 
 ‘You taking good money to go to shows?’ 
 snapped his exasperated mother. 
 
 ‘Il didn’t take no money,’ explained Nicky. 
 ‘T just takes a pillow, and I walks up to the office 
 and I says, ‘‘Properties wanted for the stage,” I 
 says. And the fella let me in, and then I took the 
 pillow up to the front and sat on it and saw the 
 show.’ 
 
 Steve burst into a shout of laughter, in which 
 the others joined, especially Granny, when it had 
 been explained to her. 
 
 She chuckled gayly over her grandson’s clever- 
 ness. ‘Granny’s little bandit. Like his father, 
 always up to tricks. I wish we had some sauer- 
 kraut to go with the chickens,’ she mused on from 
 her woodbox, busily picking the feathers from the 
 captured fowls as she spoke. 
 
318 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘Tl get you some,’ shouted Nicky, starting up, 
 eager for fresh outlets for his energy. 
 
 ‘We ain’t got no money for sauerkraut,’ an- 
 swered his mother, still out of sorts. 
 
 ‘I don’t need no money, and I won’t steal it 
 either. I thought up a way,’ returned Nicky, 
 rummaging in the cupboard for an old knife as he 
 spoke. 3 
 
 Steve looked him over critically and took out a 
 silver dollar. ‘I bet you one simoleon you don’t 
 get no kraut without paying for it, or without 
 getting caught.’ pa 
 
 ‘I bet I do!’ shouted Nicky, running out of the 
 door with no further interference from his mother. 
 The sight of a dollar always exercised a wonder- 
 fully quieting effect upon her scruples. 
 
 ‘If Nicky’s going somewhere, I’m going, too,’ 
 announced Mamie, thoroughly sick of her desul- 
 tory dish-washing. ‘I bet he’s going to another 
 show, and it ain’t fair, with me washing dishes.’ 
 
 ‘Wantta go to a show?’ asked Lusky with 
 surprising briskness. ‘I'll take you to a show.’ 
 
 ‘I don’t want to go to a show with you,’ re- 
 turned Mamie, paying no heed to her mother’s 
 darkening looks. ‘I want to dance in a show my- 
 self’ — with which remark, she began to dance in 
 the midst of the group, waving her dish towel 
 
JUST LIKE STEVE 319 
 
 like a scarf, and whining, ‘Where’s my sweetie 
 hiding?’ through her nose in the best vaudeville 
 style. 4 
 
 Both men watched her with interest, and then 
 Steve, in defiance of his hostile audience, rose and 
 joined her in ‘jazz’ dips and posturing, ignoring 
 the jealous and uneasy glances of Mr. Lusky, and 
 the angry gaze of Mrs. Boushka, until the latter 
 rose from her chair and snatched Mamie away 
 from him. 
 
 ‘You let go 0’ my kid, teachin’ all this foolish- 
 ness and the same to Nicky. You pay your room 
 rent, and you get out. You’reno good. Mamie’ll 
 be glad to go to a show with you, Mr. Lusky,’ 
 she added, somewhat lamely, and, shoving Mamie 
 ahead of her with a disgusted push, she left the 
 kitchen, slamming the door behind her. Presently 
 the wail, ‘Gran—ny! Gran—ny!’ was heard in 
 Mamic’s voice from the rear, and old Granny left 
 her chicken-picking, and hobbled grunting after 
 them to play her usual réle of impartial chairman 
 in the Boushka family. 
 
 The two men were now left alone in the kitchen. 
 Each sat tilted back in his chair, his hat resting on 
 his neck, and stared ahead in surly silence. 
 
 This was finally broken by Lusky, who re- 
 marked, ‘ You act flush with your dollars all right.’ 
 
320 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 To this Steve snapped, ‘What’s it to you?’ 
 
 ‘And you don’t work for it neither. I have to 
 work for my money,’ Lusky went on. 
 
 ‘Selling cigars ain’t work —a kid can do it,’ 
 sneered Steve. 
 
 “What you know about it?’ returned Lusky an- 
 grily, stung into defense of his business ability. 
 
 ‘I know enough to know you don’t get the 
 trade,’ answered Steve. ‘Ever thought of trying 
 a few poker tables in the back of your place, to 
 attract customers?’ 
 
 ‘I’m going to get Mamie down in my store. 
 She’s a pretty kid. She’ll attract customers,’ was 
 Lusky’s flat announcement. 
 
 ‘Nicky’d do you more good than Mamie,’ 
 answered Steve, jingling his keys reflectively. 
 ‘Mamie’d get the fellas in the store all right, but 
 how d’you know she’d sell’em cigars? A girl don’t 
 have to. She can get her shows and her joy-rides 
 without selling cigars. Nicky’d go in the business 
 and make money for you. Mamie’d make it for 
 herself; she wouldn’t be in business for your 
 health, and don’t you forget it.’ Lusky stirred a 
 bit uneasily at this. ‘Are you thinking of marry- 
 ing the kid and giving her the legal right to waste 
 your money? No fool like an old fool,’ persisted 
 Steve. 
 
JUST LIKE STEVE 321 
 
 ‘None o’ your business who I marry,’ rejoined 
 Lusky with a sulky shrug. 
 
 Steve leaned over to him eagerly. ‘See here, 
 Lusky. You leave Mamie alone, and I'll help you 
 to a thing or two with Nicky. He’s a smart kid. 
 Look at what he gets away with. Get him 
 trained, and ya got a business man. Get Mamie 
 trained, and what ya got?’ 
 
 ‘I got Mamie,’ chuckled Lusky with a leer. 
 
 ‘No, ya ain’t. Not on your life you ain't got 
 Mamie,’ rejoined Steve quickly. ‘Married or un- 
 married, you ain’t got Mamie except her upkeep. 
 Girls chase around with the young guys, and don’t 
 you forget it. An old boy like you would just pay 
 her overhead.’ 
 
 ‘Well, what’s your idea about Nicky?’ in- 
 quired Lusky, reluctant, but uneasy over the 
 picture of a young spendthrift wife. 
 
 ‘T could teach Nicky a good poker game. They 
 learn quick when they’re young. I learned 
 younger than him myself,’ explained Steve. 
 
 ‘What good’s it done ya if ya did?’ demanded 
 Lusky, thinking that he had now made a 
 point. 
 
 Steve looked behind him, lit a cigarette with 
 elaborate nonchalance, and drew a hard wad of 
 bills from his pocket. He smoothed them out, 
 
322 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 counted them before Lusky’s fascinated eyes, and 
 replaced them in his pocket. ‘Fifty berries. Not 
 so bad for one evening, eh?’ he commented while 
 Lusky continued to stare in a dazzled fashion 
 at the pocket where the bills had disappeared. 
 ‘You’d come in on a percentage basis,’ Steve 
 volunteered. ‘I’d teach him, and fix it up with 
 you. Nothing phoney about it. Play one jump 
 ahead of the other guys, is all you have to do, and 
 Nicky could, all right. He’s full of tricks already. 
 Hear him laughing out there? I bet his gag 
 worked.’ 
 
 At this point Nicky burst into the room shout- 
 ing, ‘Granny! Where’s Granny?’ — and as he 
 shouted, he waved a carton of sauerkraut in 
 the air. His commotion brought the rest of the 
 family peering through the door, and Nicky went 
 on hilariously: ‘I got the kraut at Tony’s delica- 
 tessen, and I didn’t steal it, and I didn’t buy it, 
 and Steve owes me a dollar, don’t you, Steve? 
 See! This is how I got it.’ And from his pocket 
 he produced an angleworm, which he laid elabor- 
 ately on the table, his auditors backing off in 
 some alarm from its unexpected appearance. 
 ‘See through it, Steve?’ giggled Nicky, waltz- 
 ing around the table and ecstatically poking 
 his worm. 
 
JUST, LIKE STEVE 323 
 
 “You sure got me, kid,’ confessed Steve. ‘I seen 
 trained dogs and wise birds in my time, but an 
 angleworm with a college education is a new one. 
 How’s it done?’ 
 
 The method, as volubly explained by Nicky, 
 turned out to be simple but effective. He had 
 ordered a quart of sauerkraut, and, while Tony’s 
 back was turned, had inserted the worm he had 
 just dug. This, he had exhibited in righteous in- 
 dignation to the owner of the delicatessen, and 
 with a grand air had walked out, threatening to 
 tell the owner of the rival store of the undesirable 
 character of his wares. To purchase his silence, 
 the distracted shopkeeper had pressed upon him 
 a quart of fresh sauerkraut as a gift, and pro- 
 mised to empty out his kraut tubs and purchase 
 further supplies from a more reliable dealer. 
 
 Steve listened delightedly to this recital, 
 flipped the dollar over to Nicky, and remarked to 
 Lusky in an undertone, ‘What did I tell ya? 
 Ain’t he got the bean on him?’ Then to Nicky: 
 ‘Wantta learn a game? A game the big guys play?’ 
 —and at Nicky’s delighted assent, he drew up 
 his chair, took a pack of cards and some chips out 
 of his pocket, and began to explain the principles 
 of draw poker to his young disciple. ‘You know 
 what a flush is, don’t you, Nicky? And three of a 
 
324 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 kind? That beats two pair’ — and he illustrated 
 by laying out his cards on the table. 
 
 ‘Sure,’ said Nicky. ‘I seen ’em play that game 
 down to Grogan’s, lots 0’ times.’ He hung over 
 the table breathing excitedly while Steve gave 
 further instructions, deftly shuffled the cards, and 
 dealt them for a trial game. - 
 
 Mamie looked over Steve’s shoulder, Granny 
 picked her chickens industriously, and Lusky 
 and Mrs. Boushka gazed heavily on, disapproving, 
 but nevertheless profoundly impressed by Steve’s 
 dollar so carelessly bestowed. 
 
 ‘I want three,’ shouted Nicky. Then, ‘I raise 
 ya, Steve, I raise ya five,’ 
 
 ‘Listen to the kid bluffing,’ chuckled Steve to 
 Lusky. ‘All right. I call ya, kid. Show your 
 hand.’ 
 
 Nicky shouted with laughter, exhibited a full 
 house, and swept in the chips. ‘See what I had, 
 Steve? See what I had, Granny? He thought I 
 didn’t have nothing, and I trimmed him.’ 
 
 Steve laughed and turned to Lusky: ‘Did ya 
 ever see the beat of that kid?’ he asked as he re- 
 dealt. 
 
 Nicky began to giggle as he peered at his cards. 
 ‘Raise ya ten, Steve.’ 
 
 ‘Is it beginner’s luck, or are ya bluffing me?’ 
 
JUST LIKE STEVE 325 
 
 asked Steve, looking keenly at him, as he laid 
 down twenty chips. 
 
 Nicky called, drew two cards, and with a 
 flushed face shoved all his chips into the center of 
 the table. 
 
 ‘All mght, I guess ya caught ’em,’ admitted 
 Steve, hesitating slightly. ‘Take the pot, but 
 let’s see what ya got, kid.’ 
 
 Nicky began to shriek, and dance around the 
 room. *Didn’t have nothin’ but one pair. Bluffed 
 Steve and got the pot! Bluffed Steve and got the 
 pot!’ — and he rushed to old Granny and hugged 
 her. The others looked on doubtfully at these 
 mysterious proceedings, and Steve murmured: 
 “He’s got a poker face already. Even bluffed me. 
 Better have that kid in your business, Lusky. 
 He’d skin the hide off an elephant.’ 
 
 Suddenly Mamie ran to the door. ‘It sounds 
 like little Sadie Sokol cryin’ out there,’ she ex- 
 claimed. ‘What’s the matter with Sadie?’ — and 
 she ushered in a very forlorn little girl, who was 
 crying dismally. 
 
 ‘I lost my black chicken,’ Sadie sobbed. ‘My 
 little pet chicken. He was so cute, and I guess 
 the dogs got him. I liked my chicken better than 
 anything in the world,’ she wailed on Mamice’s 
 shoulder. 
 
326 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 At this tragedy the room suddenly became very 
 still. Old Granny stopped her busy occupation 
 and tried to spread her apron over the disorder 
 on the floor. Nicky’s wild joy over his successful 
 game was instantly checked, and he stood frozen 
 with alarm and regret. Mamie managed to com- 
 bine sympathy with discretion, by throwing her 
 arms around Sadie and making her turn her back 
 to the woodbox and its incriminating evidence. 
 
 ‘T’ll get you another chicken,’ promised Nicky 
 eagerly, when he could collect himself. 
 
 ‘My father says it’s no use, the dogs get ’em.’ 
 
 ‘Then I’ll get you a dog,’ cried Nicky, even 
 more enthusiastic; but Sadie’s head shook in 
 despair. 
 
 ‘T liked this little chicken so much. He followed 
 me around, and everything,’ she sobbed. 
 
 Mamie was almost in tears herself by this time, 
 and, with her arms around the sorrowing Sadie, 
 went out with her, while Nicky watched them 
 ruefully and then cast his eyes around the room 
 in meditation. In the corner stood two fire ex- 
 tinguishers. Toward these he marched, picked 
 them up, and started out the door with them. 
 
 ‘Where ya going, kid?’ asked Steve. 
 
 ‘I’m goin’ to get Sadie a chicken,’ answered 
 Nicky stoutly. 
 
JUST LIKE STEVE 327 
 
 “Don’t you shoot chickens with that truck you 
 got and get us into trouble,’ warned his mother. 
 
 ‘I ain’t goin’ to shoot no chickens,’ he assured 
 her, and trudged out of the door. 
 
 Steve turned to the group apologetically: ‘I 
 would have paid for the kid’s chicken, but I want 
 to see what Nicky will do. He’s made for big 
 business, that kid is.’ 
 
 ‘He’s made to be a crook,’ declared Lusky, 
 suddenly rousing. | 
 
 ‘That’s just what I say,’ agreed Steve. ‘He’s 
 made for business on a large scale. It pays little 
 fellas like you to be honest. The big boys don’t 
 have to be. He’ll be busting Wall Street some 
 day, that kid will.’ 
 
 ‘It’s not such good business to pay for a chicken 
 when you don’t have to,’ returned Lusky grump- 
 ily. 
 
 ‘Oh, well,’ laughed Steve, ‘every guy has his 
 weakness. Even the biggest of them don’t like 
 to see the girls cry. Sometimes it takes more 
 than a chicken to stop them, but the idea’s the 
 same.’ 
 
 But Mr. Lusky had been thinking his slow 
 thoughts while all this was going on, and had 
 decided that it would not do to have a business 
 partner who was quite so sharp. ‘He might pick 
 
328 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 the cash drawer. I’d rather have Mamie,’ he 
 announced suddenly. 
 
 ‘Sure you would,’ agreed Mrs. Boushka in a 
 relieved tone. ‘Mamie’d work swell for you, Mr. 
 Lusky.’ 
 
 ‘Ain’t I told you to keep your hands off 
 Mamie?’ snarled Steve, fiercely, half rising from 
 his chair. ‘Are you going to let that cute little 
 girl sell tobacco to a bunch of bums in that old 
 fool’s store?’ he asked, turning to her mother. 
 
 ‘T figure to marry Mamie,’ went on Mr. Lusky 
 imperturbably. 
 
 Mrs. Boushka rose with an alacrity she had 
 not hitherto shown. ‘Mamie’ll be pleased to 
 marry you, Mr. Lusky,’ she said delightedly. 
 ‘She’ll make a good little wife.’ 
 
 Steve confronted them. ‘I’ll see you all in hell 
 first!’ he shouted, showing his teeth. 
 
 ‘He wants her himself,’ went on the star 
 roomer, gazing at vacancy. 
 
 ‘You're a crook, get out of my house!’ screamed 
 Mrs. Boushka. 
 
 ‘Tf I’m a crook, I know it, and that’s more than 
 you can say,’ shouted Steve. ‘Marrying off that 
 cute kid to old Jumbo! If it comes to buying her, 
 I can pay more than he can. How much do you 
 want for her?’ — and he took his wad of bills 
 
JUST LIKE STEVE - 329 
 
 from his pocket and began counting them off to 
 Mrs. Boushka, who gazed at the money speech- 
 less, while Mr. Lusky looked on in growing un- 
 easiness. 
 
 At this point the door opened abruptly, and a 
 policeman entered shoving Nicky in front of him. 
 Nicky was trying to look very independent and 
 manly, but his furtive glances at Steve implored 
 him for some cue as to how he was to meet this 
 new emergency. 
 
 ‘Here’s your kid trying to make out he’s the 
 agent for fire extinguishers stolen out of Casey’s 
 barber shop,’ said the officer. ‘There’s been a 
 good many complaints, and it looks like Nicky 
 was the thief. Can’t you raise your kids? What’d 
 you steal ’em for, Nicky?’ he asked, shaking the 
 boy slightly by the shoulder. 
 
 ‘I had to have the money,’ answered Nicky 
 after a pause, hanging down his head. 
 
 ‘What for?’ 
 
 ‘To buy a present,’ was the still more em- 
 barrassed reply. 3 
 
 ‘A kid sweetheart, hey? What she stick you 
 for? A diamond tyrara?’ laughed the policeman. 
 
 ‘She wanted a hen,’ answered Nicky, too dis- 
 tressed for the moment to do anything but tell the 
 truth. 
 
330 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘A hen!’ shouted the policeman, and threw 
 back his head for a laugh, when his eye happened 
 to fall on poor scared Granny vainly trying to 
 hide the chicken feathers behind the woodbox. He 
 walked over, kicked them with his foot, and then 
 rummaging among the kindlings he produced 
 the ill-fated black chicken partly plucked, and 
 held it up accusingly. ‘It looks like one of old 
 Sokol’s hens. He said his kid was crying like hell 
 because she lost it. So you pinched the wrong 
 hen, hey? and then tried to sell stolen goods to 
 pay her back? Is that it?’ he asked Nicky. 
 
 ‘It’s that fella who teaches him wrong!’ 
 screamed Mrs. Boushka, pointing at Steve. ‘I 
 bet he stole them things himself, and got Nicky 
 to sell’em. That’s what I bet’— and she shook 
 her fist in Steve’s face. 
 
 Steve nodded. ‘She’s right. That’s what I 
 did,’ he said quictly to the policeman. 
 
 A blank silence fell on the room. The entire 
 Boushka family gazed at Steve with dropping 
 jaws. Lusky’s face relaxed in a contented smile, 
 but Mamie and Nicky’s astonishment melted into 
 adoration as they edged toward their hero, now 
 doubly dear. 
 
 The policeman stared at Steve incredulously. 
 ‘You and I ain’t strangers, Steve,’ he said, ‘an’ 
 
JUST LIKE STEVE 331 
 
 you’ve been up to plenty of meanness. But a 
 coupla tin cans out of a barber shop ain’t your 
 style of graft. It’s hard to believe it of you. Did 
 he steal ’em, Nicky?’ 
 
 Nicky gazed at Steve without answering. He 
 did not know what his idol wanted him to say. 
 
 ‘Sure I stole ’em, and got you to peddle ’em, 
 and don’t you forget it,’ interposed Steve. ‘I'll 
 tell that to the judge. He’ll believe it fast enough,’ 
 he added, with some bitterness, to the policeman. 
 
 As the two men moved toward the door, 
 Nicky, who could bear the strain no longer, ran 
 after them. ‘He didn’t steal ’em!’ he cried. ‘I 
 stole ’em myself. You know I did. You stay here 
 and take care of Mamie.’ He threw himself on 
 Steve’s arm dragging him back, and Mamie flung 
 her arms around his neck sobbing convulsively. 
 
 But Mrs. Boushka snatched a child with each 
 hand and dragged them back, shaking them 
 roughly. 
 
 Steve nodded to the officer. ‘I stole the fire- 
 killers. Don’t you worry. But this kid’s right to 
 be scared about his sister. Don’t let ’em marry 
 her off to that old stiff while I’m gone, will ya? 
 It’s only the workhouse, Mamie,’ he called to the 
 girl. ‘I’ll come back and marry ya, I promise ya I 
 will.’ 
 
332 OTHER PEOPLE’S DAUGHTERS 
 
 ‘Swell husband you’d make,’ remarked the 
 policeman with a laugh. 
 
 ‘As good as that fat alligator they’re wishing 
 onto her,’ rejoined Steve, flushing hotly. ‘If he 
 lays a damned finger on her, I’ll blow up his 
 tobacco joint and him in it. Except for Granny, 
 I’m the only friend these kids ’a’ got, and they 
 know it.’ 
 
 ‘Then they’re sure outta luck,’ remarked the 
 policeman dryly; adding with more kindness, ‘I 
 don’t see through your game, but I’ll look after 
 the kids. I promise you that.’ 
 
 ‘I can look after my own kids,’ was Mrs. 
 Boushka’s furious parting shot. ‘He’s a thief, 
 and I won’t let my kids be like him.’ 
 
 “No, I don’t advise any kids to be like me,’ was 
 Steve’s bitter response as the door closed. 
 
 Mamie had in the meantime torn herself from 
 her mother, and she and Nicky clung to each 
 other in the middle of the room. 
 
 ‘Don’t cry, Mamie,’ comforted Nicky. ‘He’ll 
 come back.’ 
 
 ‘He’d better not!’ shouted their mother. 
 
 ‘He’s a dirty bum,’ commented Lusky as he 
 tilted back comfortably in his chair. 
 
 ‘He is not. He’s the swellest fella I know,’ 
 sobbed Mamie in a hot defense. 
 
JUST LIKE STEVE 333 
 
 ‘He’s a crook,’ pursued Lusky, cocking his 
 derby over one eye, but otherwise unmoved. 
 
 ‘Well, if he’s a crook, then I wantta be a 
 crook,’ announced Nicky. ‘He’s the best guy in 
 the world. When I grow up, I’m goin’ to be — 
 just — like — Steve!’ 
 
 THE END 
 
vated 
 Rot uN A 
 
 War, a hy 4 
 ets. aa 
 mere ibs 
 wha ja vad 
 
 wits ie | 
 
 5 
 
 
 

 
HQ798 .W46 
 Other people’ s daughters, 
 
 Princeton Theolog minary—Speer Library 
 
 ut 
 
 Ware pea