Description
The Trimmed Lamp: and other Stories of the Four Million
THE TRIMMED LAMP
Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the
other. We often hear “shop-girls” spoken of. No such persons exist.
There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that
way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be
fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as
“marriage-girls.”
Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work
because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around.
Nancy was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active,
country girls who had no ambition to go on the stage.
The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and
respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became
wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months
that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them.
Meddlesome Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss Lou.
While you are shaking hands please take notice–cautiously–of
their attire. Yes, cautiously; for they are as quick to resent a
stare as a lady in a box at the horse show is.
Lou is a piece-work ironer in a hand laundry. She is clothed in a
badly-fitting purple dress, and her hat plume is four inches too
long; but her ermine muff and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts
will be ticketed in the windows at $7.98 before the season is over.
Her cheeks are pink, and her light blue eyes bright. Contentment
radiates from her.