Late that afternoon Mr. Spencer stopped at my end of the counter. He had been watching me, he said, and he liked the way I worked. If I wished to come back after Christmas he would be glad to give me a permanent position. Though I had never intended to remain longer than the holiday rush, his manner was so pleasant, so sincerely appreciative, that before I realized it I had promised to report the day after Christmas.
That evening, Christmas Eve, on returning from work I found a white sheet spread on the floor of the hall, just within the front door and by the side of the stairs. The lines into which the sheet had fallen struck me as peculiar, and I paused on the stairs and stared down at it. My eyes wandering farther made out the uniform of a policeman in the dusk of the rear hall.
“That’s Mrs. Howard,” the voice of the little organist told me as she developed from the shadow beyond the policeman. “She was taken sick while at work, this morning—they sent her home in a cab. When I got a doctor he said she must go at once to a hospital. She died as the stretcher-bearers were bringing her down the stairs. She has to remain here on the floor until the coroner comes.”
“Heart trouble?” I asked.
“Yes. The doctor said it was brought on by overwork and underfeeding.” The little organist’s voice trembled, and she gulped down a sob as she added: “And on Christmas Eve, too!”
“And in a Christian country,” I agreed. “In the richest city in the world.”
That Christmas was the first holiday I ever really appreciated. Remaining in bed the entire day I subsisted on a loaf of stale bread and two specked apples, both left-overs of the hat-trimmer, who had gone to spend a week with her brother in Jersey.
During the second week in January Mr. Spencer again brought up the question of my becoming a regular saleswoman in the premium station. Nora thought he planned to make me head of stock at a near-by counter. Forced to give him a definite answer, I told him that conditions at my home made it necessary for me to leave New York—I would give up my job at the end of that week. On my telling him good-by he assured me that he would always have an opening for me whenever I chose to return.
Alice and the hat-trimmer were the only persons who knew that I had signed a contract with the Sea Foam Hotel, a large hotel at a well-known resort. I was to serve as waitress.