“Where is the little store you spoke of? Do you suppose you can ever get it, Sadie?”
“Don’t! You make me feel bad here,” said Sadie, with her hand on her heart. “Say! I just ache to try what I can do makin’ lids for the East Side Four Hundred. The wholesale houses let youse come there and work when they’re makin’ up the season’s pattern hats, and then you can get all the new wrinkles. Oh, I wish I was goin’ to start next season in me own store instead of pullin’ greenies into Papa Yawcob’s suit shop,” and the East Side girl sighed dolefully.
“Let’s go see the shop you want,” suggested Helen.
“Oh, dear! It don’t do no good,” said Sadie. “But I often go out of my way to take a peek at it.”
They went a little farther uptown and Helen was shown the tiny little store which Sadie had picked out as just the situation for a millinery shop.
“Ye see, there’s other stores all around; but no millinery. Women come here to buy other things, and if I had that little winder full of tasty hats—Chee! wouldn’t it pull ’em in?”
They stood there some minutes, while the young East Side girl, so wise in the ways of earning a living, so sharp of apprehension in most things, told her whole heart to the girl who had never had to worry about money matters at all—told it with no suspicion that My Lady Bountiful stood by her side.
She pointed out to Helen just where she would have her little counter, and the glass-fronted wall cases for the trimmed hats, and the deep drawers for “shapes,” and the little case in which to show the flowers and buckles, and the chair and table and mirror for the particular customers to sit at while they were being fitted.
“And I’d take that hunchback girl—Rosie Seldt—away from the millinery store on my block—she hates to work on the sidewalk the way they make her—she could help me lots. Rosie is a smart girl with some ideas of her own. And I’d curtain off the end of the store down there for a workroom, and for stock—Chee, but I’d make this place look swell!”
Helen, who had noted the name and address of the rental agent on the card in the window, cut her visit with Sadie short, so afraid was she that she would be tempted to tell her friend of the good fortune that was going to overtake her. For the girl from Sunset Ranch knew just what she was going to do.