CHAPTER II.
In the luxurious house Marjorie and Sadie did not miss their mother as Ada did; indeed it was a delightful change for them to have so much of their sister’s society. She was more amusing than their mother, and understood their games better. When they heard that their mother had gone away to a hospital to be taken care of and made well again they said they were “dreadfully sorry,” but that was partly because sister Ada looked so sad, and partly because it was polite to say so. About a week after her mother had left her home Ada was startled one evening by the old butler, an Englishman, coming up to her while she was waiting for her father to come down to dinner, and saying in a hushed voice, “Will you wait any longer, miss? I don’t think the master will come home to dinner.”
“Then serve it at once,” Ada said; “but why do you think he will not return?”
“He left the house last night, miss, after you had gone to bed, and he has not been seen since.”
Ada’s heart stood still. “Not been seen since! What do you mean? Has he not been at his office? Perhaps he is with my mother?”
“I don’t think so, miss. Have you not seen the evening papers?” The man held a copy behind his back, Ada heard it rustle.
“Give it me,” she cried, as she put one hand on the handsomely carved pedestal which held a statue of the dancing fawn to steady herself.
“I’m sorry, miss, to be the one to hand it to you, but the whole city knows it by this time. It can’t be hid from you much longer.”
The girl looked at him with a kindly pity in her eyes. She was sorrier for him at that moment than for herself. He was a faithful old servant who had been with them since she was a baby. He handed her the paper and went softly from the room, having the delicacy to feel that it was not the place even of an old servant to see his young mistress’s sorrow.
“He’s a low skunking hound,” he said to himself, “if he is my master, to leave the pretty bit of a creature like that with those two children on her hands. Whatever will happen to them, I don’t know. There’s about enough money in the house to pay off all these miserable servants, and not much more. It’s the dirtiest trick I ever saw played. It was the disgrace and shock that sent his poor wife off her head, him living like a prince while he’s been defrauding poor widows and children.”
About a month from that day pretty Ada Nicoli, who had been brought up to look upon herself as an heiress, started out through the city of New York to try and find some means of livelihood for herself and her two little sisters. Her mother’s little fortune brought in just enough money to pay for her residence in the comfortable asylum to which she had gone before the terrible exposure of Mr. Nicoli’s failure had been made public, and to pay the weekly board for Ada and her two sisters at a plain middle-class boarding-house in East Thirty-second Street.
Ada had tried offering herself as a music teacher, for she played well and liked music, but wherever she went she was asked whom she had studied under, and if she had been taught in Germany. So to-day she was bent on another mission. She had put her pride still further down in her pocket, but unconsciously her pretty chin was tilted a little higher. She had to walk now—her tender feet were tired and weary—where she had once dashed along in a smart carriage. When she arrived at a part of the town which was little occupied by shops her steps slackened. She was thinking what she would say when she reached Madame Maude’s, the fashionable milliner from whom she had been accustomed to buy her hats. Madame Maude had only one window to her shop, which was curtained and lined with red velvet. The simple sailor hat, one black toque, and a white feather boa displayed in it gave the ignorant public little idea of the fact that almost every time the door bell rang to admit a customer, it meant that Madame Maude was fifty dollars the richer. Ada stopped a moment and looked at the window. How often she had gone with her mother to the shop and come away with some pretty flowery hat without even asking the price of it. And now she sighed, for the price of one of those hats would pay for a term of Marjorie’s lessons at school. They must be educated, the girl cried in her heart, and they must be brought up as her mother’s children ought to be, even if they had to work afterwards. She would not let them grow up as shop-girls from childhood. She opened the door and found herself inside the shop with no words ready to meet the question of the young girl who came forward.
“Can I see Madame Maude?” she asked nervously. “I wish to speak to her alone.”
The girl stared at Ada’s perfectly-fitting dress, robbed of all its luxurious trimmings, as being unsuitable for her present position. Madame Maude came forward and told the girl to retire.
“What can I do for you?” she said kindly; she knew that the large bill still standing in Mrs. Nicoli’s name would never be paid, but Mrs. Nicoli had been a good customer in the days gone by, and for once a woman was grateful for favours past.
“You have heard of our sad trouble,” Ada began, “the world has painted it even blacker than it is, so there is no need for me to tell you what a terrible position I am in. I must make money somehow. I have tried in so many ways and failed. I came to ask you if you knew of any position in a business house that I could fill. I would not mind how hard I worked.” She looked so unlike hard work that Madame Maude’s heart was touched by her appeal which was so pathetically ignorant.
“What can you do?” she said, wondering what the girl called “hard work.”
“I don’t know,” Ada replied in a shamefaced way, “for I have never tried, but I think I could learn millinery very quickly.”
“My dear child,” the elder woman said, “you don’t know what you are saying. Do you know that my best hand was apprenticed for three years before she received a dollar; the next year she got a little more than a dollar a week, the fifth year she went to Paris and studied for a year and a half. She is not only a milliner but an artist; it takes years to acquire the knowledge, and I pay her accordingly. My hats are not made by girls who have trimmed up their old hats at home.”
Ada looked crestfallen. “I never thought of all that; I only know that your hats are always in perfect taste.”
Madame Maude had been looking at her while she spoke. “If you won’t be offended, I’ll make you an offer,” she said.
Ada bent her head in answer. She was willing to sweep the floors if she had been asked. She had spent her last dollar, and the washing-bill was not paid for last week, and Sadie had started a bad cough which demanded a tonic, and tonics have to be paid for.
“If you will come here and act as saleswoman,” Madame Maude said, “I will pay you well.”
“Oh, how kind of you!” the girl cried. “Of course I can’t be offended.” It was such a nice, quiet little shop, quite a private house; there was nothing to shock her in the suggestion.
“Stop a bit,” Madame Maude said, “till you hear what that means. I won’t pay you fifteen dollars a week for merely handing a customer a hat, and telling her the price—you’ve got to make her buy it.”
“How can I?” Ada said, in a mystified voice.
“I’ll tell you,” Madame Maude explained; and she took a lovely hat from a drawer, and put it on her own head. Her face was broad and homely, and the hat did not suit her either well or badly.
“Look at me in this hat,” she said, “and imagine I am the customer.”
Ada looked.
“Now look at yourself in it,” and she placed the hat on Ada’s head of shining hair.
Ada smiled, a half-pleased, half-bashful smile.
“Now when the customer says she does not think the hat will do—she is afraid it does not suit her—and you have seen that it is the hat she is hankering after, say quite casually, ‘I’m sorry, madam, you don’t like it,’ and put it on your own head. Move about the room in it, and let her see how charming it is. In a few moments she will have forgotten how she herself looked in it, and will fondly imagine that she will look like you, and the hat is sold.”
Ada’s face had fallen.
“Will you do it?” Madame Maude said. “It will be money easily earned; my saleswoman is leaving next week.”
“I am to make money by my face,” Ada cried, with a choking voice; “it’s so horrible.” But something was saying to her, “You must have money; you have spent your last dollar, except what will pay for your bare board. The children must go to school, and Sadie wants a tonic. She has a cough because she has been denied the luxuries she has been used to, and has had to walk to school in all sorts of weather.”
“Yes, I will come,” she said; “but what if I do not sell them as you expect?”
“I will risk that,” the woman said kindly, “for I know the value of a pretty face below a forty-dollar hat.”
When Ada found herself once again on Fifth Avenue, she could scarcely believe she was the same girl who had lived in the magnificent mansion at the other end of the town a few months ago, and had spent all her days in light-hearted amusement. She felt tired and depressed, and afraid of the position she had undertaken to fill.
When she reached home she found that Sadie and Marjorie had not yet come back from school. She was anxious about their delay, and stood on the doorstep looking up the street to try and catch a sight of them.
“Why do you fret yourself about those two children, bless your dear heart. They’re a deal better able to look after themselves than you are.”
One of the boarders was addressing Ada from the hall.
“They’re so young to be out alone,” Ada said. “They’ve always had someone to bring and take them from school.”
“Time they learnt to come and go alone, I guess. How long do you suppose you can go on working yourself to pieces, anyhow? If you want to do the best you can for these two young ’uns, bring them up to look after themselves. You were brought up like a sugar-plum, and you’re feeling it mighty bad now, I reckon, to be treated like pig-iron.”
“I know you mean kindly,” Ada said, “but at least I have had the benefit of refined surroundings in my youth. I can’t let little Sadie knock about like a street child.”
“Much like a street child she is, with her white starched petticoats, and dainty pinafores. It’s just killing you, child, that’s what it is, and coloured things are just as comfortable.”
“But we have only white things,” Ada said apologetically, “and I’m afraid I can’t buy any more just yet.”
“To be sure. I never thought of that,” the fat, good-natured boarder said laughingly. “What’s going to happen to you, child, when these fine things wear out. It does me good to look at your pretty figure in these well-cut gowns. But they won’t stand rough wear.”
Then Ada told her she was going to earn fifteen dollars a week at Madame Maude’s.
“You’ll have all the young men in the town coming to choose their sisters’ hats,” the boarder said, “and men are a deal more easily taken in than women folk. Madame Maude is a clever woman.”
(To be continued.)