A lady and her husband

by Amber Reeves Blanco White

Mary stuck to her point. "Then the room outside?"

This time he was frankly irritable. "If you knew a little more of business conditions you would understand that what you are asking is impossible. In business parts of London there aren't 'rooms outside' waiting to be rented next to each of our shops. They're not to be had. Space is gold. We have to wait years sometimes before we can get the sites we want for the depots themselves. Do you think we had only to ask to get a frontage on Oxford Circus?"

When Mary had come into the room she had come humbly. She had been prepared to be told that her demands were out of the question and she had not intended to be obstinate or wrangle about them. Now she did feel obstinate, and she felt too, that she had not been fairly met.

"Of course I can quite understand that it isn't easy to arrange," she admitted, "but I think that girls working as hard as that ought to have some little corner where they can be private and comfortable."

James found himself irritated as he was seldom irritated—even by Trent, or even by the damned fools who wanted him to allow his people to form Trade Unions. "Good Heavens!" he said, "do you imagine I pay them to be private and comfortable! I pay them to do my work! When they go home they can be as comfortable as they please. As long as they are on my premises they ought either to be working or waiting their turn to work—and I'll see that they are!" He almost glared at her.

Mary said nothing. She was astonished.

After a moment James was astonished too. He could never remember speaking to her like this before. It cost him very little effort to admit that he had been hasty. "What a shame," he said, "to fall on the old lady like that because she isn't very experienced in business ways! We asked her for her advice, and now we rate her because some of it isn't quite practicable. I was very bad-tempered, my dear, and I hope you will forgive me. Suppose we talk about one of your other points—you said something about shoes—and sitting down."

Mary did not want to leave the matter of rooms. By this time it seemed to her horrible that when the girls found time for a meal they should have to eat it in a cupboard that served for a cloak-room, at a table in the china room, or standing in the passage. Other firms provided dining-rooms. But when James was looking kindly at her, frankly and generously apologising, offering peace, she could not refuse it because she, being a woman, wanted to worry her point—to "nag."

She told him with a smile as generous as his, that she would discuss standing, or shoes, or anything else that he wanted.

Here James was at his best, quick, attentive, sympathetic. He praised her womanly insight and expressed his gratitude for the trouble she had taken. He understood at once that the girls' feet ought to be looked after, even on the low ground of self-interest, and he told her that he would fix up with a firm that supplied ward shoes to nurses and see that the girls each bought a pair. As for the standing, she laid great stress on it, so he would stretch a point and give way to her. He didn't believe the girls came to any harm by it and it was a fact that customers didn't like the look of girls in uniform lolling on the chairs doing nothing. If Mary ever noticed, no big shop ever allowed its girls to be idle. A customer who came in when the shop was empty would always find the assistants busy at something, in spite of the Shop Acts. But still one wanted to keep them fresh for the busy times—he'd have a circular drafted, and if Mary liked to look at it before it went out to the managers, she could. After all, he'd heard that they were doing great things in America by studying the workers.