Mabel thought of the group of well-to-do women in the other room. She had small respect for most of them, none at all for some. It would have been a very complicated matter to analyze the reasons which caused these "ladies" to interest themselves in the cause of working girls. Some few of them had similar—if less forceful—motives to those which had led Mabel to give her life to the work. Some of them liked to be thought odd, and found in labor unions a piquant fad. Two were suffragists and were seriously interested in all organizations of women. There was one at least whose morbid instincts were tickled by the stories of desperate misery which circulated in the League.
Probably all of them had been somewhat influenced to seek election by the fact that Mrs. Van Cleave was on the Board—she might invite them to one of her functions.
She was a mystery to Mabel. She was very fat and very rich and a leader of the inner circle of "Society." She attended the meetings regularly, and never seemed to take the slightest interest in anything. Every January first she mailed a check for ten dollars. Mabel had never succeeded in getting any other money from her. But her social prestige was of unquestioned value—otherwise she was absolute dead-wood.
Mrs. Karner, the wife of a millionnaire newspaper owner, was the only one of them all who really helped Mabel. She was an intelligent woman and rendered efficient service along many lines.
It was a hard group to work with. The sincere ones were occupied with many other activities. It was difficult to get any enthusiasm into them. But the League could not exist without their financial support. Now that the "skirt-finishers" strike was ending in disaster, how could she keep up their interest, how could she persuade them further to open their pocket-books? Yetta's radiant face gave her a suggestion.
"Wait a minute," she interrupted her in the middle of a sentence. "There are some other people who ought to hear about this. Come along."
She led Yetta through the double doors into the committee-room. It was one of Eleanor Mead's achievements. The room had been extended to the back of the house. Along the sides were piles of cheap folding chairs. When they were put up, they would accommodate about two hundred. By the windows in the back there was a large flat-topped table and ten easy chairs in which the Advisory Council were comfortably installed. Above the table hung a great mezzatone photograph of the Rouen statue of Jeanne d'Arc. The room, all in brown tones, harmonized with it and the half-dozen similar portraits of famous women.
"Ladies," Mabel said, "this is Yetta Rayefsky. She has just come to tell me of a new strike in her trade—vests. We've finished to-day's business. And if you can spare the time, I am sure you will be interested in her story. Begin at the beginning, Yetta," she went on as the ladies nodded assent, "and tell us all about it."
Yetta was utterly confused. She had never seen so much fine raiment nor so many jewels. No one had ever stared at her through lorgnettes in the insolent way that Mrs. Van Cleave did.