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"Has it not occurred to you that your course is just tinged with assurance?" "Have I said or done anything unbecoming a lady?" asked Belle indignantly. Mr. Schriven laughed good-naturedly, for Belle's snapping eyes and brusque ways were beginning to interest him. "Oh, I forgot that you American working-women are all ladies.
Belle whirled upon her with such a vivid and instantaneous flash of anger that the girl stepped back precipitately and dropped the box. Just at this moment Mr. Schriven, in the act of departure, came out of his office and witnessed the whole scene. He stopped and smiled broadly.
"I didn't know I was doing it, and now I'll never forgive myself." Clara looked at her wonderingly as she explained: "The foreman said you asked Mr. Schriven to make a place for you, but I don't believe you meant that he should 'sack' me to do it. Why, you are nothing but a great, warm-hearted child.
You mean what you say, that if employed you will put on no airs and conform to rules?" "I mean just what I say." Mr. Schriven fell into a foxy fit of musing, and there rose before his mind the pale face and dragged, weary, listless look of a girl now standing at the ribbon counter. "She'll break down when hard work begins again," he thought; "she's giving way now with nothing much to do.
A few months ago my social position was as good as yours, and now that we have been unfortunate and I must work, I see no presumption in asking you to your face for honest work." "Not at all, my dear young lady," resumed Mr. Schriven, still maintaining his half-amused, half-ironical manner, "but I must inform you that I cannot afford to employ my social equals as shop-girls."
One thing is certain I'm going to get work, and my work will repay those who employ me a hundred times." "Well, you are an odd fish," Mr. Schriven ejaculated; "I beg your pardon, you are not yet in my employ you are an eccentric young lady, and a very young one, too, to be making your way in the world in this irresistible style.
At any rate we are not to blame, since, as you have said, we didn't know. Now a funeral, such as you suggest, would be very costly, and would do no one any good. It would scarcely be in good taste, for, considering the poor woman's circumstances, it would be ostentatious." "Belle, Mr. Schriven is right," said her father, in a tone of quiet authority.
Schriven, in the multiplicity of other interests, had almost forgotten Belle, and she had become in his mind merely a part of the establishment. Her dejected face and subdued manner excited some remark among her companions when she again appeared, but her explanation, "Mother is ill," quieted all curiosity.
Schriven, with difficulty repressing a laugh, but he proceeded very gravely to induce the girl to take his own practical view. "In the first place, my child," he said, "that woman died of consumption she didn't starve at all." "I think she died the sooner," Belle faltered. "Possibly. If so, she was the sooner out of her misery.
"Let us rather consider the need of the daughter," Mr. Schriven resumed. "You say she is worn and weak from watching and work. A quarter of the money that a funeral would cost would give her two or three weeks in the country.
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