“I do envy you. You see my people always want me most first thing in the morning. It’s awful, if one has been up very late.”
“And what is our life worth without late hours? The evening is the only life we have.”
“Exactly. And they are the same really. They do their work to be free of it and live.”
“Precisely; but they are waited on. They have their houses and baths and servants and meals and comforts. We get up in cold rooms untended and tired. They ought to be first at the office and wait upon us.”
“She is a queen in her office; waited upon hand and foot.”
“Well—why not? I do them the honour of bringing my bright petunia clad feminine presence into their dingy warehouse; I expect some acknowledgment of the honour.”
“You don’t allow them either to spit or swear.”
“I do not; and they appreciate it.”
“Mine are beasts. I defy anyone to do anything with them. I loathe the city man.”
Miriam sighed. In neither of these offices she felt sure, could she hold her own—and yet compared to her own long day—what freedom the girls had—ten to five and eleven to six and any clothes they found it convenient to wear. But city men ... no restrictions were too high a price to pay for the privileges of her environment; the association with gentlemen, her quiet room, the house, the perpetual interest of the patients, the curious exciting streaks of social life, linking up with the past and carrying the past forward on a more generous level. The girls had broken with the past and were fighting in the world. She was somehow between two worlds, neither quite sheltered, nor quite free ... not free as long as she wanted, in spite of her reason to stay on at Wimpole Street and please the people there. Why did she want to stay? What future would it bring? Less than ever was there any chance of saving for old age. She could not for ever go on being secretary to a dentist.... She drove these thoughts away; they were only one side of the matter; there were other things; things she could not make clear to the girls; nor to anyone who could not see and feel the whole thing from inside, as she saw and felt it. And even if it were not so, if the environment of her poorly paid activities had been trying and unsympathetic, at least it gave seclusion, her own room to work in, her free garret and her evening and week-end freedom. But what was she going to do with it?