第96章

The ways they are many and wide, and seldom are two ways the same.

She entered.The girl glanced up, with eyes slowly changing from far-away dreaminess to present and practical--pleasant blue eyes with lashes and brows of the same color as the thick, neatly done yellowish hair.

"Could I get a glass of milk and a roll?" asked Susan, a modest demand, indeed, on behalf of a growing girl's appetite twenty-four hours unsatisfied.

The blonde girl smiled, showing a clean mouth with excellent teeth.

"We sell the milk for five cents, the rolls three for a nickel.""Then I'll take milk and three rolls," said Susan."May I sit at a table? I'll not spoil it.""Sure.Sit down.That's what the tables are for." And the girl closed the book, putting a chromo card in it to mark her place, and stirred about to serve the customer.Susan took the table nearest the door, took the seat facing the light.The girl set before her a plate, a knife and fork, a little form of butter, a tall glass of milk, and three small rolls in a large saucer.

"You're up and out early?" she said to Susan.

On one of those inexplicable impulses of frankness Susan replied: "I've been sleeping in the park."The girl had made the remark merely to be polite and was turning away.As Susan's reply penetrated to her inattentive mind she looked sharply at her, eyes opening wonderingly."Did you get lost? Are you a stranger in town? Why didn't you ask someone to take you in?"The girl reflected, realized."That's so," said she."I never thought of it before....Yes, that is so! It must be dreadful not to have any place to go." She gazed at Susan with admiring eyes."Weren't you afraid--up in the park?""No," replied Susan."I hadn't anything anybody'd want to steal.""But some man might have----" The girl left it to Susan's imagination to finish the sentence.

"I hadn't anything to steal," repeated Susan, with a kind of cynical melancholy remotely suggestive of Mabel Connemora.

The restaurant girl retired behind the counter to reflect, while Susan began upon her meager breakfast with the deliberation of one who must coax a little to go a great ways.Presently the girl said:

"Where are you going to sleep tonight?"

"Oh, that's a long ways off," replied the apt pupil of the happy-go-lucky houseboat show."I'll find a place, I guess."The girl looked thoughtfully toward the street."I was wondering," she said after a while, "what I'd do if I was to find myself out in the street, with no money and nowhere to go....

Are you looking for something to do?"

"Do you know of anything?" asked Susan interested at once.

"Nothing worth while.There's a box factory down on the next square.But only a girl that lives at home can work there.Pa says the day's coming when women'll be like men--work at everything and get the same wages.But it isn't so now.A girl's got to get married."Such a strange expression came over Susan's face that the waitress looked apologetic and hastened to explain herself: "Idon't much mind the idea of getting married," said she.

"Only--I'm afraid I can never get the kind of a man I'd want.

The boys round here leave school before the girls, so the girls are better educated.And then they feel above the boys of their own class--except those boys that're beginning to get up in the world--and those kind of boys want some girl who's above them and can help them up.It's dreadful to be above the people you know and not good enough for the people you'd like to know."Susan was not impressed; she could not understand why the waitress spoke with so much feeling."Well," said she, pausing before beginning on the last roll, "I don't care so long as Ifind something to do."

"There's another thing," complained the waitress."If you work in a store, you can't get wages enough to live on; and you learn things, and want to live better and better all the time.It makes you miserable.And you can't marry the men who work at nice refined labor because they don't make enough to marry on.

And if you work in a factory or as a servant, why all but the commonest kind of men look down on you.You may get wages enough to live on, but you can't marry or get up in the world.""You're very ambitious, aren't you?"

"Indeed I am.I don't want to be in the working class." She was leaning over the counter now, and her blond face was expressing deep discontent and scorn."I _hate_ working people.All of them who have any sense look down on themselves and wish they could get something respectable to do.""Oh, you don't mean that," protested Susan."Any kind of work's respectable if it's honest.""_You_ can say that," retorted the girl."_You_ don't belong in our class.You were brought up different.You are a _lady_."Susan shrank and grew crimson.The other girl did not see.She went on crossly:

"Upper-class people always talk about how fine it is to be an honest workingman.But that's all rot.Let 'em try it a while.