"You speak as if you knew."
"I do," said Susan, in a tone that forbade question.
"I ain't exactly stuck on the idea myself," pursued Clara. "And if I don't, why when my looks are gone, where am I worse off than I'd be at the same age as a working girl? If I have to get a job then, I can get it—and I'll not be broken down like the respectable women at thirty—those that work or those that slop round boozing and neglecting their children while their husbands work. Of course, there's chances against you in this business. But so there is in every business. Suppose I worked in a factory and lost a leg in the machinery, like that girl of Mantell, the bricklayer's? Suppose I get an awful disease—to hear some people talk you'd think there wasn't any chances of death or horrible diseases at respectable work. Why, how could anybody be worse off than if they got lung trouble and boils as big as your fist like those girls over in the tobacco factory?"
"You needn't tell me about work," said Susan. "The streets are full of wrecks from work—and the hospitals—and the graveyard over on the Island. You can always go to that slavery. But I mean a respectable life, with everything better."
"Has one of those swell women from uptown been after you?"
"No. This isn't a pious pipe dream."
"You sound like it. One of them swell silk smarties got at me when I was in the hospital with the fever. She was a bird—she was. She handed me a line of grand talk, and I, being sort of weak with sickness, took it in. Well, when she got right down to business, what did she want me to do? Be a dressmaker or a lady's maid. Me work twelve, fourteen, God knows how many hours—be too tired to have any fun—travel round with dead ones—be a doormat for a lot of cheap people that are tryin' to make out they ain't human like the rest of us. Me! And when I said, 'No, thank you,' what do you think?"
"Did she offer to get you a good home in the country?" said Susan.
"That was it. The country! The nerve of her! But I called her bluff, all right, all right. I says to her, 'Are you going to the country to live?' And she reared at me daring to question her, and said she wasn't. 'You'd find it dead slow, wouldn't you?' says I. And she kind o' laughed and looked almost human. 'Then,' says I, 'no more am I going to the country. I'll take my chances in little old New York,' I says."
"I should think so!" exclaimed Susan.