"You're one of those that things happen to," the old cabinetmaker said to her on a September evening, as they sat on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.The tenements had discharged their swarms into the hot street, and there was that lively panorama of dirt and disease and depravity which is fascinating--to unaccustomed eyes."Yes," said Tom, "things'll happen to you.""What--for instance?" she asked.
"God only knows.You'll up and do something some day.You're settin' here just to grow wings.Some day--swish!--and off you'll soar.It's a pity you was born female.Still--there's a lot of females that gets up.Come to think of it, I guess sex don't matter.It's havin' the soul--and mighty few of either sex has it.""Oh, I'm like everybody else," said the girl with an impatient sigh."I dream, but--it doesn't come to anything.""No, you ain't like everybody else," retorted he, with a positive shake of his finely shaped head, thatched superbly with white hair."You ain't afraid, for instance.That's the principal sign of a great soul, I guess.""Oh, but I _am_ afraid," cried Susan."I've only lately found out what a coward I am.""You think you are," said the cabinetmaker."There's them that's afraid to do, and don't do.Then there's them that's afraid to do, but goes ahead and does anyhow.That's you.I don't know where you came from--oh, I heard Etta's accountin' for you to her ma, but that's neither here nor there.I don't know where you come from, and I don't know where you're going.But--you ain't afraid--and you have imagination--and those two signs means something doing."Susan shook her head dejectedly; it had been a cruelly hard day at the factory and the odors from the girls working on either side of her had all but overwhelmed her.
Old Tom nodded with stronger emphasis."You're too young, yet,"he said."And not licked into shape.But wait a while.You'll get there."Susan hoped so, but doubted it.There was no time to work at these large problems of destiny when the daily grind was so compelling, so wearing, when the problems of bare food, clothing and shelter took all there was in her.
For example, there was the matter of clothes.She had come with only what she was wearing.She gave the Brashears every Saturday two dollars and a half of her three and was ashamed of herself for taking so much for so little, when she learned about the cost of living and how different was the food the Brashears had from that of any other family in those quarters! As soon as she had saved four dollars from her wages--it took nearly two months--she bought the necessary materials and made herself two plain outer skirts, three blouses and three pairs of drawers.
Chemises and corset covers she could not afford.She bought a pair of shoes for a dollar, two pairs of stockings for thirty cents, a corset for eighty cents, an umbrella for half a dollar, two underwaists for a quarter.She bought an untrimmed hat for thirty-five cents and trimmed it with the cleaned ribbon from her summer sailor and a left over bit of skirt material.She also made herself a jacket that had to serve as wrap too--and the materials for this took the surplus of her wages for another month.The cold weather had come, and she had to walk fast when she was in the open air not to be chilled to the bone.Her Aunt Fanny had been one of those women, not too common in America, who understand and practice genuine economy in the household--not the shabby stinginess that passes for economy but the laying out of money to the best advantage that comes only when one knows values.This training stood Susan in good stead now.It saved her from disaster--from disintegration.
She and Etta did some washing every night, hanging the things on the fire escape to dry.In this way she was able to be clean;but in appearance she looked as poor as she was.She found a cobbler who kept her shoes in fair order for a few cents; but nothing was right about them soon--except that they were not down at the heel.She could recall how she had often wondered why the poor girls at Sutherland showed so little taste, looked so dowdy.She wondered at her own stupidity, at the narrowness of an education, such as hers had been, an education that left her ignorant of the conditions of life as it was lived by all but a lucky few of her fellow beings.
How few the lucky! What an amazing world--what a strange creation the human race! How was it possible that the lucky few, among whom she had been born and bred, should know so little, really nothing, about the lot of the vast mass of their fellows, living all around them, close up against them? "If I had only known!" she thought.And then she reflected that, if she had known, pleasure would have been impossible.She could see her bureau drawers, her closets at home.She had thought herself not any too well off.Now, how luxurious, how stuffed with shameful, wasteful unnecessaries those drawers and closets seemed!
