“No, it is not,” she contradicted. “You can make her reimburse you for every penny that trip cost you—your packing and moving your things to storage. Every penny. That’s the only way to touch a woman of her type—through her pocketbook. She has no heart. She doesn’t care a rap for those children except as a means unto her end—to glorify herself. She intends that institution to be her monument. She will wring or squeeze every dollar she can from every person she can in order to add one stone to that monument. You can help the Association—we are always coming up against such women. It is your duty to do all you can to prevent other women falling into her trap.”
Because I could not agree with my friend—her estimate of Mrs. Howard—I promised to sleep on her advice and let her know what I finally decided to do.
Mrs. Howard, as I then saw her, had a single-track mind—a disease more common than is generally admitted. Absorbed by Rodman Hall she had thought of no other subject, had no other interest for so long that her mind had got into a groove, just one groove. She could not see, much less realize, anything outside that groove, neither to the side of it, above it, nor below it. The interest of Rodman Hall and that alone was considered.
When, after sleeping on it for several nights, I finally decided to follow my friend’s advice, I felt sure Mrs. Howard would refuse to reimburse me. I itemized the expenditures. She would write me that she was in no way responsible for my having to buy three boxes, nor for my paying a twenty-five-cent tip. The amount I had paid for the cartage and storage of my goods, she would insist, I felt sure, was none of her business. She would protest that her advertisement was in good faith, and as she had already paid the wages due me for two days, and my railroad ticket to and from New York, she would pay me no more.
Tuesday morning, my second day in the loan department of the T. Z. Trust Company, as I was leaving the rooming-house I met the postman on the steps, and he handed me Mrs. Howard’s reply. That reply now lies before me. It is written in long hand on the official paper of Rodman Hall. In the copy that follows only the proper names have been changed.
“Rodman Hall, June 25, 1917.
“Dear Miss Porter:
“I agree with you that I made a mistake in trying to give this work to a gentlewoman. It will never turn out as I had hoped it would. Almost every day some one comes to me for help and the only work I have I offer.
“Dormitory work and dish-washing, it is true, is not what gentlewomen would select as a general thing to do, yet if one should decide to do it rather than be out of work, I feel sure the duties would be well performed.
“I am writing Mrs. Jones, the assistant secretary, to send you a check for $4.37.