THE CLEVER GOLDFISH
FINANCIALLY, Patty came out just even on her ‘white work,’ for though the woman paid Nan the dollar for the dozen finished garments, she deducted the same amount for the wrongly placed sleeves.
She also grumbled at the long machine stitch Patty had used, but Nan’s patience was exhausted, and giving the woman a calm stare, she walked out of the shop.
“It’s perfectly awful,” she said to Patty, when relating her adventure, “to think of the poor girls who are really trying to earn their living by white work. It’s all very well for you, who are only experimenting, but suppose a real worker gets all her pay deducted!”
“There’s hardly enough pay to pay for deducting it, anyway,” said Patty. “Oh, Nan, it is dreadful! I suppose lots of poor girls who feel as tired and lame as I do this morning, have to go straight back to their sewing-machine and run it all day.”
“Of course they do; and often they’re of delicate constitutions, and insufficiently nourished.”
“It makes me feel awful. Things are unevenly divided in this world, aren’t they, Nan?”
“They are, my dear; but as that problem has baffled wiser heads than yours, it’s useless for you to worry over it. You can’t reform the world.”
“No; and I don’t intend to try. But I can do something to help. I know I can. That’s where people show their lack of a sense of proportion. I know I can’t do anything for the world, as a world, but if I can help in a few individual cases, that will be my share. For instance, if I can help this Christine Farley to an art education, and so to a successful career, why that’s so much to the good. And though father has set me a hard task to bring it about, I’m going to do it yet.”
“Your father wouldn’t have set you such a task if you hadn’t declared it was no task at all! You said you could earn your living easily in a dozen different ways. Already you’ve discarded two.”