The egg muffins were excellent and received enthusiastic praise. Jeannette ate them with the heated canned tamales, and sipped her tea, one eye on the clock, for she was anxious to make an early start if Etta was to catch, at any seemly hour, a train back to Cohasset Beach.
It was after two before she and her niece found themselves seated in the thundering subway.
“Well, now, tell me your troubles, my dear,” Jeannette began; “I want to hear all about them.”
But Etta had to be coaxed before she would become communicative.
“Oh, it’s this!” she finally burst out, striking her skirt with disdainful fingers. “It’s my clothes, Aunt Jan! I was horribly ashamed last night. There wasn’t a girl there at Marjorie’s cousin’s party who wasn’t a lot better dressed than I! I felt awful and was so embarrassed! One of the girls’ older sister was there and I saw her taking an inventory of everything I had on! I just wanted to sink through the floor! Moth’ does everything she possibly can to see that I look decent, and I know better than anyone else what she does without so that I can have things! But I don’t want that! I don’t want Moth’ and Dad denying themselves on my account. I want to be able to take care of myself and buy my own clothes, earn my own living and be independent! ... Aunt Jan, won’t you get me a job at your office? Won’t you back me up with Moth’ and Dad, and urge them to let me go to work? I don’t want to stay at home and just help Moth’ here and there with the housework and do nothing else but go to the movies and dance jazz! They call me a ‘flapper,’ and I suppose I am one,—but what else is there for me to be? I hate it, Aunt Jan,—I hate being a flapper! I want to be something different and better; I want to make my own way in the world and not be obliged to stick round home until a man with enough money comes along and asks me to marry!”
It was the old familiar cry, the cry of youth calling for self-expression, the cry of budding life eager for experience, the cry of young womanhood demanding independence, emancipation.
The words rang familiarly in the older woman’s ears, and she smiled sadly with a sorry head-shake.
“Why, what’s the matter, Aunt Jan?” asked the girl after a troubled scrutiny of her companion’s face. “Don’t you think I have a right to earn my own living if I want to?” She renewed her arguments with characteristic vehemence. There was nothing new in them for Jeannette; she had voiced them all herself twenty-five years ago. A memory of her patient, hard-working little mother came to her, and she saw her once again with the comforter over her knees, the knitted red shawl pinned across her shoulders, thin of hair, with trembling pendent cheeks, bending over the canvas-covered ledger, figuring—figuring—figuring. And she saw herself, the impatient eighteen-year-old, striking her faded velvet dress with angry fingers, protesting against the humiliation her shabby attire occasioned her, asking to be allowed to work, to earn the money that would permit her to dress as other girls dressed, and be her own mistress, self-supporting. How well, she, Jeannette, could now sympathize with that earnest, tearful, little mother!
She looked at Etta and, in her mind, saw her anxiously taking dictation from some frowning business man, saw her white flying fingers busy at some switch-board disentangling telephone cords, pictured her perched on a tall stool, bending over a great tome, making careful entries, saw her folding circulars, writing cards, filing letters, giving her youth, her eagerness and beauty to the grim treadmill of business life, and her heart filled with pain.
“... and there’s no reason on earth,” Etta was saying, “why I shouldn’t help out at home. Dad and Moth’ have given all their lives to us children; they’ve denied themselves and denied themselves just so we can have clothes for our backs, enough to eat and go to school! It isn’t fair. It’s time I helped. I could go to business college, take a course, and in three months, I could learn to be a stenographer and earn fifteen or twenty dollars a week....”