Saturdays Child | Page 4

desk scrupulously, and lettered trim labels for
boxes and drawers, but she was a lazy young creature when regular
work was to be done, much given to idle and discontented dreams.
At this time she was not quite twenty-one, and felt herself to be
distressingly advanced in years. Like all except a few very fortunate
girls of her age, Susan was brimming with perverted energy--she could
have done a thousand things well and joyously, could have used to the
utmost the exceptional powers of her body and soul, but, handicapped
by the ideals of her sex, and lacking the rare guidance that might have
saved her, she was drifting, busy with work she detested, or equally
unsatisfied in idleness, sometimes lazily diverted and soothed by the
passing hour, and sometimes stung to her very soul by longings and
ambitions.
"She is no older than I am--she works no harder than I do!" Susan
would reflect, studying the life of some writer or actress with bitter
envy. But how to get out of this groove, and into another, how to work
and fight and climb, she did not know, and nobody ever helped her to
discover.
There was no future for her, or for any girl here, that she knew. Miss
Thornton, after twelve years of work, was being paid forty-five dollars,
Miss Wrenn, after eight years, forty, and Susan only thirty dollars a
month. Brooding over these things, Susan would let her work

accumulate, and endure, in heavy silence, the kindly, curious
speculations and comments of her associates.
But perhaps a hot lunch or a friendly word would send her spirits
suddenly up again, Susan would forget her vague ambitions, and reflect
cheerfully that it was already four o'clock, that she was going with
Cousin Mary Lou and Billy Oliver to the Orpheum to-night, that her
best white shirtwaist ought by this time to have come back from the
laundry.
Or somehow, if depression continued, she would shut her desk, in
mid-afternoon, and leave Front Office, cross the long deck--which was
a sort of sample room for rubber goods, and was lined with long cases
of them--descend a flight of stairs to the main floor, cross it and
remount the stairs on the other side of the building, and enter the
mail-order department. This was an immense room, where fifty men
and a few girls were busy at long desks, the air was filled with the hum
of typewriters and the murmur of low voices. Beyond it was a door that
gave upon more stairs, and at the top of them a small bare room known
as the lunch-room. Here was a great locker, still marked with the labels
that had shown where senna leaves and tansy and hepatica had been
kept in some earlier stage of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's existence, and
now filled with the girls' lunch-boxes, and rubber overshoes, and
hair-brushes. There was a small gas-stove in this room, and a long table
with benches built about it. A door gave upon a high strip of flat roof,
and beyond a pebbled stretch of tar were the dressings-rooms, where
there were wash-stands, and soap, and limp towels on rollers.
Here Susan would wash her hands and face, and comb her bright thick
hair, and straighten belt and collar. There were always girls here: a
late-comer eating her luncheon, two chatter-boxes sharing a bit of
powdered chamois-skin at a mirror, a girl who felt ill drinking
something hot at the stove. Here was always company, and gossip,
Susan might stop for a half-cup of scalding hot tea, or a chocolate from
a striped paper bag. Returning, refreshed and cheered, to the office, she
would lay a warm, damp hand over Miss Thornton's, and give her the
news.

"Miss Polk and Miss French are just going it up there, Thorny, mad as
hops!" or "Miss O'Brien is going to be in Mr. Joe Hunter's office after
this."
"'S'at so?" Miss Thornton would interestedly return, wrinkling her nose
under the glasses she used while she was working. And perhaps after a
few moments she would slip away herself for a visit to the lunch-room.
Mr. Brauer, watching Front Office through his glass doors, attempted
in vain to discourage these excursions. The bolder spirits enjoyed
defying him, and the more timid never dared to leave their places in
any case. Miss Sherman, haunted by the horror of "losing her job,"
eyed the independent Miss Brown and Miss Thornton with open awe
and admiration, without ever attempting to emulate them.
Next to Susan sat severe, handsome, reserved little Miss Wrenn, who
coldly repelled any attempts at friendship, and bitterly hated the office.
Except for an occasional satiric comment, or a half-amused correction
of someone's grammar, Miss Wrenn rarely spoke.
Miss Cashell was her neighbor,