The problem haunted me for weeks. During that period every time I looked over the help-wanted columns of certain papers I saw that Sea Foam Hotel was in need of chambermaids and waitresses. Not until I had mailed my letter applying for a position as chambermaid did I mention it to Alice and Mrs. Wilkins.
The expression of horror that sprang into Alice’s eyes was somewhat moderated when the hat-trimmer expressed her satisfaction. She declared it would be the very best thing Alice and I could do—both go to the seashore as hotel help. What could we save on seven and eight dollars a week? She by sitting up evenings to make the little bows used on the inside of men’s stiff hats, in addition to regular nine hours a day six days a week, was only able to get twelve dollars a week.
Then gouging down in her stocking she drew out a roll of bills.
“There!” she said, throwing the money into my lap. “You can count it yourself. I’ve been workin’ since the middle of September—nearly four months—and that’s all I’ve saved. You know how plain I eat and I ain’t spent as much as ten dollars for clothes. Count it.”
Eleven one-dollar bills.
“The only time I can save money,” she went on, “is durin’ the summer I works in the linen-room of a hotel down on Coney Island. The eatin’ is somethin’ grand. Because there ain’t room enough in the hotel for us linen-room girls they allows us three dollars a week extra. Last summer I and another girl got a room for fifteen dollars a month. Besides savin’ our wages we both had somethin’ left of our room money.”
The elaborate prospectus—“Information for Waitresses,” it was headed—described in such glowing terms the many advantages provided for the help of the Sea Foam that Mrs. Wilkins all but threw up her hat-trimming job to go with me.
“It must be grand!” she exclaimed. “To get such good things to eat all the year round as they give us at Coney in the summer. Sure, you’ll get it at that hotel! That place is sweller than Coney. An’ your tips will be bigger, too.”
When I called her attention to the statement that waitresses serving in the side halls received sixteen dollars a month while those serving in the main dining-room only got thirteen she urged me to “sign up” for a side hall job. Side hall she assured me meant a piazza glassed in or a sun parlor.
“Them’s the places real swells like to eat in so they can see things whilst they’re eatin’,” she insisted. “They’ll be further from the kitchen and serving-room, but you’ll get bigger tips. Better ‘sign up’ for the job in the side hall.”