This particular Thursday I had even found some one to talk to in the recreation room when I sneaked up at three o'clock. There came a time when Schmitz's patience was strained over my regular disappearance from about 3 to 3.30. There was absolutely nothing for me to do just then in my own line, so I embraced that opportunity daily to take my way to the recreation room and see what pickings I could gather up. But one afternoon Schmitz's face bore an extra-heavy frown. “Say, what you do every day that keeps you from your work all this time? Don't you know that ain't no way to do? Don't you understand hotel work is just like a factory? Everybody must be in his place all day and not go wandering off!”
“Ever work in a factory?” I asked Schmitz.
“Well, then, I'm telling you I have, and hotel work ain't like a factory at all.”
“Vell, you see it's dis vay—naturally—”
This Thursday up in the recreation room I found an ancient scrubwoman, patched and darned to pieces, with stringy thin hair, and the fat, jovial Irishwoman from the help's pantry. The three of us had as giddy a half hour as anyone in all New York. We laughed at one another's jokes till we almost wept, and forgot all about the thermometer. The fat Irishwoman had worked at the hotel two years, the scrubwoman almost that long. Both “lived out.” They, too, informed me I had one of the best jobs in the hotel—nobody messin' in with what you're doin'—they leave y'alone. The fat one had worked some time in the linen room, but preferred pantry work. The linen room was too much responsibility—had to count out aprons and towels and things in piles of ten and tie them, and things like that—made a body's head swim.
Realizing Schmitz's growing discomfort, I finally had to tear myself away. The fat Irishwoman called after me, “Good-by, dear, and God bless y'.”
Upstairs at supper that night I had the luck to land again at a talkative table. We discussed many things—Ireland, for one. One girl was she who had come two years ago from Ireland and did salads in the main kitchen. Such a brogue! An Irish parlor maid had been long years in this country. The two asked many questions of each other about their life in the Old Country. “Shure,” sighed one, “I love every stick and every stone and tree and blade of grass in Ireland!” “Shure,” sighed the other, “an' that's just the way I feel about it, too!”
Everyone at the table liked working at our hotel. According to them, the hotel was nice, the girls nice, hours nice.
The subject of matrimony, as ever, came up. Not a soul at the table but what was ag'in' it. Why should a woman get married when she can support herself? All she'd get out of it would be a pack of kids to clean up after, and work that never ended. Of course, the concession was eventually made, if you were sure you were gettin' a good man— But how many good men were there in the world? And look at the divorces nowadays! Why try it at all? One girl reported as statistically accurate that there was one divorce in the United States to every four marriages. “You don't say!” was the chorus.