She turned on me and looked me up and down.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“There’s a sort of superstition at home—however hopeless a cause may appear, if I get busy and work for it it wins.”
“You believe it?”
“Why not?” I parried. “We all thought President Wilson’s chance for re-election was hopeless. At the eleventh hour I had myself made vice-president of a Woodrow Wilson League and got busy.”
“That was a close shave!” she breathed.
“My work saved him,” I laughed.
“For heaven’s sake!” she exclaimed, pressing two cards of introduction into my hand. “Get busy and work for suffrage.”
Within half an hour I presented myself at the employees’ entrance of Daskam & Howe. Instead of the kindly little manager a young woman with a face like an Indian tomahawk received me. Being among the late-comers, I was seated in the room in which the buyers of the firm had their desks. All these buyers, including corsets and women’s underwear, were men. At least that was the condition the day that I began work. A day or so later a woman, the only woman employed by the firm as a buyer, returned from her vacation.
“Hello, fellers!” she called, stopping in the door on her return. “Damn busy, I see, chewing the rag. You’re a hell of a lot.” And after this a long string of oaths.