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Page 10
The capable, cool-eyed, impersonal, young, bald-headed man whose task
it was to engage six of the contestants, was aware of a feeling of
suffocation as if he were drowning in a sea of frangipanni, while
white clouds, hand-embroidered, floated about him. And then a sail
hove in sight. Hetty Pepper, homely of countenance, with small,
contemptuous, green eyes and chocolate-colored hair, dressed in a suit
of plain burlap and a common-sense hat, stood before him with every
one of her twenty-nine years of life unmistakably in sight.
"You're on!." shouted the bald-headed young man, and was saved. And
that is how Hetty came to be employed in the Biggest Store. The story
of her rise to an eight-dollar-a-week salary is the combined stories
of Hercules, Joan of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood. You
shall not learn from me the salary that was paid her as a beginner.
There is a sentiment growing about such things, and I want no
millionaire store-proprietors climbing the fire-escape of my tenement-
house to throw dynamite bombs into my skylight boudoir.
The story of Hetty's discharge from the Biggest Store is so nearly a
repetition of her engagement as to be monotonous.
In each department of the store there is an omniscient, omnipresent,
and omnivorous person carrying always a mileage book and a red
necktie, and referred to as a "buyer." The destinies of the girls in
his department who live on (see Bureau of Victual Statistics)--so much
per week are in his hands.
This particular buyer was a capable, cool-eyed, impersonal, young,
bald-headed man. As he walked along the aisles of his department lie
seemed to be sailing on a sea of frangipanni, while white clouds,
machine-embroidered, floated around him. Too many sweets bring
surfeit. He looked upon Hetty Pepper's homely countenance, emerald
eyes, and chocolate-colored hair as a welcome oasis of green in a
desert of cloying beauty. In a quiet angle of a counter he pinched
her arm kindly, three inches above the elbow. She slapped him three
feet away with one good blow of her muscular and not especially lily-
white right. So, now you know why Hetty Pepper came to leave the
Biggest Store at thirty minutes' notice, with one dime and a nickel in
her purse.
This morning's quotations list the price of rib beef at six cents per
(butcher's) pound. But on the day that Hetty was "released" by the B.
S. the price was seven and one-half cents. That fact is what makes
this story possible. Otherwise, the extra four cents would have--
But the plot of nearly all the good stories in the world is concerned
with shorts who were unable to cover; so you can find no fault with
this one.
Hetty mounted with her rib beef to her $3.50 third-floor back. One
hot, savory beef-stew for supper, a night's good sleep, and she would
be fit in the morning to apply again for the tasks of Hercules, Joan
of Arc, Una, Job, and Little-Red-Riding-Hood.
In her room she got the granite-ware stew-pan out of the 2x4-foot
china--er--I mean earthenware closet, and began to dig down in a
rats'-nest of paper bags for the potatoes and onions. She came out
with her nose and chin just a little sharper pointed.
There was neither a potato nor an onion. Now, what kind of a beef-
Stew can you make out of simply beef? You can make oyster-soup
without oysters, turtle-soup without turtles, coffee-cake without
coffee, but you can't make beef-stew without potatoes and onions.
But rib beef alone, in an emergency, can make an ordinary pine door
look like a wrought-iron gambling-house portal to the wolf. With salt
and pepper and a tablespoonful of flour (first well stirred in a
little cold water) 'twill serve--'tis not so deep as a lobster a la
Newburg nor so wide as a church festival doughnut; but 'twill serve.
Hetty took her stew-pan to the rear of the third-floor hall.
According to the advertisements of the Vallambrosa there was running
water to be found there. Between you and me and the water-meter, it
only ambled or walked through the faucets; but technicalities have no
place here. There was also a sink where housekeeping roomers often
met to dump their coffee grounds and glare at one another's kimonos.
At this sink Hetty found a girl with heavy, gold-brown, artistic hair
and plaintive eyes, washing two large "Irish" potatoes. Hetty knew
the Vallambrosa as well as any one not owning "double hextra-
magnifying eyes" could compass its mysteries. The kimonos were her
encyclopedia, her "Who's What?" her clearinghouse of news, of goers
and comers. From a rose-pink kimono edged with Nile green she had
learned that the girl with the potatoes was a miniature-painter living
in a kind of attic--or "studio," as they prefer to call it--on the top
floor. Hetty was not certain in her mind what a miniature was; but it
certainly wasn't a house; because house-painters, although they wear
splashy overalls and poke ladders in your face on the street, are
known to indulge in a riotous profusion of food at home.
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