She rose early in the morning, sometimes at five, and her mother would hear her thumping and pounding with an iron in the kitchen as she pressed a shirtwaist to wear fresh to the office, or clitter-clattering in the bathroom as she polished her shoes or washed stockings. Her costume was invariably neat and smart, but she dressed soberly, with knowing effectiveness for her working day. Her mother, yawning sleepily or frowning in mild distress, would find her getting her own breakfast at seven.
“Why, dearie,” she would plaintively remonstrate, “whatever do you want to bother with the stove for? I’m going to get your breakfast; you leave that to me.... I don’t see,” she might add querulously, “why you have to get up at such unearthly hours.”
Alice would shortly make her appearance, and with wrappers trailing, slippers clapping and shuffling about the kitchen, her mother and sister would complete the simple preparations for her morning meal, and set about getting their own. About the time they had borne in the smoking granite coffee-pot again to the dining-room, and had hunched up their chairs to the table, Jeannette would be ready to leave the house. When she came to kiss them good-bye, she would always find them there, her mother’s cheek soft and warm, Alice’s firm, hard face, cool and smelling faintly of soap. She would seem so vigorously alive as she left them, so confident and capable. There was always a tremendous satisfaction in feeling well-dressed, well-prepared and early-started for her day’s work. As she left the house, and filled her lungs with the first breath of sharp morning air, there would come a tug of excitement at the prospect of the hours ahead. She loved the trip downtown on the bumping, whirring elevated; she loved the close contact with fellow-passengers, wage-earners like herself; she loved the brisk walk along Seventeenth Street and across the leaf-strewn square, where she faced the tide of clerks and office workers that poured steadily out of the Ghetto and lower East Side, and set itself toward the great tall buildings of lower Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and she loved the first glimpse of the gold sign of the Chandler B. Corey Company, with the feeling that she belonged there and was one of its employees.
She would be at her desk half to three-quarters of an hour ahead of the other girls. There would usually be work left over from the previous day. She liked settling herself for the busy hours to come when no one was around and she could do so with comfort.
She would hardly be conscious of the other girls’ arrival, and would often greet them with a smiling good-morning, or answer their questions with no recollection afterwards of having done so.
The whirlwind of office demands and the tide of work would soon be about her. Miss Reubens wanted her, Mr. Kipps rang for a stenographer, Mr. Featherstone had an important letter to get off before he went out. Would Miss Sturgis look up that letter to the Glenarsdale Agency? Would Miss Sturgis come down when she was free? Mr. Cavendish had an article he wanted copied as soon as possible. Miss Bixby was busy, Miss Foster was busy, Miss Lopez, Miss Pratt, Miss La Farge were busy; Miss Sturgis was busiest of all. She thrilled to the rush and fury of her days. There was never a let-up, never a lull; there was always more and more work piling up.
At noon, at twelve-thirty, at one,—whenever she was free for a moment about that time,—she would slip out for her lunch. She had learned she must eat,—eat something, no matter how little, in the middle of the day. She still patronized the soda and candy counter in the big rotunda of Siegel-Cooper’s mammoth department store for her china cup of coffee and two saltine crackers. Sometimes she spent another nickel for a bag of peanut brittle. Somewhere she had read that the sugar in the candy and the starch in the peanuts contained a high percentage of nutritious value. She nibbled out of the bag on her way back to the office.
She would be gone hardly more than half the hour she was allowed for luncheon. Between one and three in the afternoon was the time she was least interrupted, and in this interval her fingers flew, and letter after letter,—slipped beneath its properly addressed envelope,—would steadily augment the pile in the wire basket that stood beside her machine. She rejoiced when it grew so tall, the stack was in danger of falling out.
In the late afternoon came the rush and the most exacting demands. Miss Reubens had a letter that must go off that night without fail; Mr. Featherstone had just returned from a conference with a big advertiser and wanted a record of the agreement typed at once; Mr. Kipps had a communication to be instantly dispatched; Mr. Corey needed a stenographer. The girls were all busy; they had too much to do already; they could not finish half the letters that had been given them. Well, how about Miss Sturgis? Could Miss Sturgis manage to get out just one more? It was so important. Yes, Miss Sturgis could,—of course she could; it might be late, but if the writer would remain to sign it, she’d manage to finish it somehow.
“You’re a fool,” Miss Bixby said to her one day sourly. “Nobody’s going to thank you for it; you don’t get paid a cent more; I don’t see why you want to make a beast-of-burden out of yourself. They just use you like a sponge in this office; squeeze every ounce of strength out of you, and then throw you away. Look at Linda Harris!”