On the drive home Charley talked of her new work. She was full of shop stories. Nightly she brought home some fresh account of the happenings in her department; a tale of a buyer, or customer, or clerk, or department head. Henry Kemp called these her stock of stock-girl stories. Following her first week at Shield's she had said grimly: "Remember that girl O. Henry used to write about, the one who kept thinking about her feet all the time? That's me. I'm that little shop-girl, I am."
Her father encouraged her dinner-table conversation and roared at her rather caustic comment:
"Our buyer came back from New York to-day. Her name's Healy. She has her hair marcelled regularly and wears the loveliest black crêpe de chine frocks with collars and cuffs that are simply priceless, and I wish you could hear her pronounce 'voile.' Like this—'vwawl.' It isn't a mouthful; it's a meal. Don't glare, mother. I know I'm vulgar. When a North Shore customer comes in you say, 'Do let me show you a little import that came in yesterday. It's too sweet.' All high-priced blouses are 'little imports.' They're as precious as jewels since the war, of course. Healy used to be a stock-girl. They say her hair is gray but she dyes it the most fetching raspberry shade. Her salary is twelve thousand a year and she could get eighteen at any one of the other big stores. She stays at Shield's because she thinks it has distinction. 'Class,' she calls it, unless she's talking to a customer or someone else she's trying to impress. Then she says 'atmosphere.' She supports her mother and a good for-nothing brother. I like her. Her nails glitter something grand. She calls me girlie. I wonder if her pearls are real."
Lottie listened now, fascinated, amused, and yet wondering, as Charley gave an account of the meeting of the Ever Upward Club. Charley was driving with one hand on the steering wheel. She was slumped low down on her spine. Lottie thought how relaxed she looked and almost babyish, and yet how vital and how knowing. The Ever Upward Club, she explained, was made up of the women workers in Shield's. There had been a meeting of the club this morning, before the store opened at nine. It was the club's twenty-fifth anniversary. Charley, on the subject, was vitriol.
"There they sat, in their black dresses and white collars. Some of the collars weren't so white. I suppose, after a few years, washing out white collars at night when you get home from work loses its appeal. First Kiesing made a speech about the meaning of Shield's, and the loftiness of its aim. I don't know where he got his information but I gathered that to have the privilege of clerking there makes you one of the anointed. Kiesing's general manager, you know. Then he brought forward Mrs. Hough. She's pretty old and her teeth sort of stick out and her voice is high and what they call querulous, I suppose. Anyway it never drops at the end of a sentence. She told how she had started the Ever Upward Club with a membership of only fifteen, and now look at it. Considering that you have to belong to it, and pay your dues automatically when you enter the store, I don't see why she feels so set up about it. But anyway, she does. You'd think she had gone around converting the heathen to Christianity. She told us in that nasal rasping voice that it was the spirit of cheer and good-will that made tasks light. Yes, indeed. And when we got home at night we were to help our mothers with the dishes in a spirit of cheer and with a right good will. Then she read one of those terrible vim-and-vigour poems. You know. Something like this:
If you think you are beaten, you are.
If you think you dare not, you don't.
If you like to win and don't think you can
It's almost a cinch you won't.
There was a lot more to it, about Life's battles and the man who wins. Most of the girls looked half-dead in their chairs. They had been working over-time for the spring opening. Then a girl sprang to the platform—she's the club athletic director, a college girl, big, husky, good-looking brute, too. 'Three rousing cheers for Mrs. Hough! Hip hip—' We all piped up. And I couldn't think of anything but Oliver Twist and the beadle—what was his name?—Bumble. Then this girl told us about the value of games and the Spirit of Play, and how we should leap and run about—after you've done the dinner dishes with a right good will, I suppose, having previously walked eleven thousand miles in your department showing little imports and trying to convince a woman with a forty-two bust that a thirty-eight blouse is a little snug.... 'The romance of business.' Ha!"