The Other Girls Part 46

"I guess there's something that isn't quite reasonable, somewhere,"

said Kate. "But I don't think it's you, Mrs. Scherman, not meaningly. I wonder if two or three sensible people couldn't straighten it out? There ought to be a way. The nursery girl helps, doesn't she?"

"Yes. She does the baby's things. But while baby is so little, I can't spare her for much more. With doing them, and her own clothes, I don't seem to have her more than half the time, now."

Kate Sencerbox sat still, considering.

Bel Bree was afraid that was the last of it. In that one still minute she could almost feel her beautiful plan crumbling, by little bits, like a heap of sand in a minute-gla.s.s, away into the opposite end where things had been before, with n.o.body to turn them upside down again. Which _was_ upside down, or right side up?

She had not thought a word about big, impossible was.h.i.+ngs.

Kate spoke out at last.

"Every one brings the work of one, you see," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"I wish there needn't be any nursery girl."

Mrs. Scherman lifted her eyebrows in utter amaze. The suggestion to the ordinary Irish mind would have been, as she had already experienced, another nurse; certainly not the dispensing with that official altogether.

"What wages do you pay, Mrs. Scherman?" was Kate's next question. It came, evidently in the process of a reasoning calculation; not, as usual, with the grasping of demand.

"Four dollars to the cook. Which _is_ the cook?"

"I don't believe we know yet," answered Bel Bree, laughing in the glee of her recovering spirits. "But I think it would probably be me. Kate can make mola.s.ses candy, but she hasn't had the chance for much else. And I should like to have the kitchen in my charge. I feel responsible for the home-iness of it, for I started the plan."

With that covert suggestion and encouragement, she stopped, leaving the lead to Kate again.

Kate Sencerbox was as earnest as a judge.

"How much to the others?" said she.

"Three dollars each."

"That's ten dollars a week. Now, if you only had Bel and me, and paid us three or three and a half a piece, couldn't you put out--say, five dollars' worth of fine was.h.i.+ng? Wouldn't the nurse's board and wages come to that? And I'd engage to help with the baby as much as you say you get helped now."

"But you would want some time to yourself?"

"Babies can't be awake all the time. I guess I should get it. I've never had anything but evenings, so far. The thing is, Mrs.

Scherman, if I can try this anywhere, I can try it here. I don't suppose people have got things fixed just as they would have been if there'd always been a home all over the house. If we go to live with anybody, we mean to make it living _in_, not living _out_. And we shall find out ways as we go along,--all round. If you're willing, we are. It's Bel's idea, not mine; though she's let me take it to myself, and do the talking. I suppose because she thought I should be the hardest of the two to be suited. And so I am. I didn't believe in it at first. But I begin to see into it; and I've got interested. I'd like to work it out on this line, now. Then I shall know."

There were not many more words after that; there did not need to be.

Mrs. Scherman engaged them to come, at once, for three dollars and a half a week each.

"It's a kind of a kitchen gospel," said Bel Bree, as they walked up Summit Street. "And it's got to come from the _girls_. What can the poor ladies do, up in their nurseries, with their big houses, full of everything, on their hands, and the servants dictating and clearing out? They can't say their souls are their own. They can't plan their work, or say how many they'll have to do it. The more they have, the more they'll have to have. It ain't Mr. and Mrs.

Scherman, and those two little children,--or two and a half,--that makes all the to-do. Every girl they get makes the dinners more, and the Mondays heavier. Why, the family grows faster down-stairs than up, with a nurse for every baby! Think of the tracking and travelling, the wear and tear. Every one makes work for one, and dirt for two. It's taking in a regiment down below, and laying the trouble all off on to the poor little last baby up-stairs! And the ladies don't see through it. They just keep getting another parlor girl, or door girl, or nursery girl, and wondering that the things don't grow easier. It's like that queer rule in arithmetic about fractions,--where dividing and multiplying get all mixed up, and you can't hold on to the reason why, in your mind, long enough to look at it."

"Why didn't you go down and see the kitchen?"

"Because, how could she leave those tots to take care of themselves while she showed us? Our minds were made up. You said just the truth; if we can try it anywhere, we can try it there. And whatever the kitchen is, it's only our place to begin on. We'll have it all right, or something near it, before we've been there a fortnight.

It's only a room we take, where the work is given in to do. If we had one anywhere else, we should expect to fix up and settle in it according to our own notions, and why not there? We're rent free, and paid for our work. I'm going to have things of my own; personal property. If I want a chandelier, I'll save up and get one; only I sha'n't want it. There's ways to contrive, Kate; and real fun doing it."

An hour afterward, they were on their way back, with their leather bags.

Baby Karen was asleep, and Mrs. Scherman came down-stairs to let them in again, with Marmaduke holding to her hand, and Sinsie hopping along behind. They all went into the kitchen together.

Mrs. McCormick had "cleared it up," so that there was at least a surface tidiness and cheerfulness. The floor was freshly scrubbed, the table-tops scoured down, the fire made, and the gas lighted.

Mrs. McCormick had gone home, to be ready for her own husband and her two "boys" when they should come in from their work to their suppers.

The kitchen was in an L; there were two windows looking out upon a bricked yard. Bel Bree kept the points of the compa.s.s in her head.

"Those are south windows," said she. "We can have plants in them.

And it's real nice their opening out on a level."

Forward, the house ran underground. They used the front bas.e.m.e.nt for a store-room. Above the kitchen, in the L, was the dining-room. A short, separate flight of stairs led to it; also a dumb waiter ran up and down between china closet and kitchen pantry. Both kitchen and dining-room were small; the L had only the width of the hall and the additional s.p.a.ce to where the first window opened in the western wall.

In one corner of the kitchen were set tubs; a long cover slid over them, and formed a sideboard. Opposite, beside the fire-place, were sink and boiler; between the windows, a white-topped table. There were four dark painted wooden chairs. A clock over the table, and a rolling-towel beside the sink; green Holland window-shades; these were the only adornments and drapery. There was a closet at each end of the room.

"Will you go up to your room now, or wait till after tea?" asked Mrs. Scherman.

"We might take up our things, now," said Bel, looking round at the four chairs. "They would be in the way here, perhaps."

Kate took up her bag from the table.

"We can find the room," she said, "if you will direct us."

"Up three flights; two from the dining-room; the back chamber. You can stop at my room as you come down, and we will think about tea.

Mr. Scherman will soon be home; and I should like to surprise him with something very comfortable."

The girls found their way up-stairs.

The room, when they reached it, looked pleasant, though bare. The sun had gone below the horizon, beyond the river which they could not see; but the western light still shone in across the roofs.

There were window-seats in the two windows, uncus.h.i.+oned. A square of clean, but faded carpet was laid down before the bed and reached to the table,--simple maple-stained pine, uncovered,--that stood beneath a looking-gla.s.s in a maple frame, between the windows. There were three maple-stained chairs in the room. A door into a good, deep closet stood open; there was a low grate in the chimney, unused of course, with no fire-irons about it, and some sc.r.a.ps of refuse thrown into it and left there; this was the only actual untidiness about the room, where there was not the first touch of cosiness or comfort. The only depth of color was in a heavy woven dark-blue and white counterpane upon the bed.

"Now, Kate Sencerbox, shut up!" said Bel Bree, turning round upon her, after the first comprehensive glance, as Kate came in last, and closed the door.

Kate put her m.u.f.f down on the bed, folded her hands meekly, and looked at Bel with a mischievous air that said plainly enough "Ain't I?" and which she would not falsify by speech.

"Yes, I know you are; but--_stay_ shut up! All this isn't as it is a going to be,--though it's _not_ bad even now!"

Kate resolutely stayed shut up.

"You see that carpet is just put there; within this last hour, I dare say. Look at the clean ravel in the end. They've taken away the old, tramped one. That's a piece out of saved-up spare ends of breadths, left after some turn-round or make-over, I know! It's faded, and it's homely; but it's spandy clean! I sha'n't let it stay raveled long. And I've got things. Just wait till my trunk comes. My ottoman, I mean. That's what it turns into. Have you got a stuffed cover to your trunk, Katie?"

Kate lifted up her eyebrows for permission to break silence.

"Of course you can, when you're asked a question. You've had time now for second thoughts. I wasn't going to let you fly right out with discouragements."