Belle nibbled celery tranquilly. "We talked it over. But Charley makes her own decisions in matters like this you know, mother."
As with one accord Great-aunt Charlotte and Aunt Lottie turned and regarded Charley. A certain awe was in their faces, unknown to them.
"But why exactly Friday night?" persisted Mrs. Payson. "Lottie, ring." Lottie rang, obediently. Hulda entered.
"That was mighty good soup, mother," said Henry Kemp.
Mrs. Payson refused to be mollified. Ignored the compliment. "Why exactly Friday night, if you please?"
Charley wiggled a little with pleasure. "I hoped you'd ask me that. I'm dying to talk about it. Oo! Roast chickens! All brown and crackly! Well, you see, my actual class-work in merchandising and business efficiency will be about finished at the end of the month. After that, the university places you, you know."
"Places you!"
Mrs. Carrie Payson had always had an uneasy feeling about her granddaughter's choice of a career. That she would have a career Charley never for a moment allowed them to doubt. She never called it a career. She spoke of it as "a job." In range her choice swung from professional dancing (for which she was technically and temperamentally fitted) to literature (for the creating of which she had no talent). Between these widely divergent points she paused briefly to consider the fascinations of professions such as licensed aviatrix (she had never flown); private secretary to a millionaire magnate (again the influence of the matinee); woman tennis champion (she held her own in a game against the average male player but stuck her tongue between her teeth when she served); and Influence for Good or Evil (by which she meant vaguely something in the Madame de Staël and general salon line). She had never expressed a desire to be a nurse.
In the middle of her University of Chicago career this young paradox made up of steel and velvet, of ruthlessness and charm, had announced, to the surprise of her family and friends, her intention of going in for the University's newest course—that in which young women were trained to occupy executive positions in retail mercantile establishments. Quite suddenly western co-educational universities and eastern colleges for women—Vassar, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr—were training girl students for business executive positions. Salaries of ten—twenty—twenty-five thousand a year were predicted, together with revolutionary changes in the conduct of such business. Until now such positions had been occupied, for the most part, by women who had worked their way up painfully, hand over hand, from a cash or stock-girl's job through a clerkship to department head; thence, perhaps, to the position of buyer and, later, office executive. On the way they acquired much knowledge of human nature and business finesse, but it was a matter of many years. These were, usually, shrewd, hard-working, successful women; but limited and often devoid of education other than that gained by practical experience. This new course would introduce into business the trained young woman of college education. Business was to be a profession, not a rough-and-tumble game.
Charley's grandmother looked on this choice of career with mingled gratification and disapproval. Plainly it was the Isaac Thrift in Charley asserting itself. But a Thrift—a woman Thrift—in a shop!—even though ultimately occupying a mahogany office, directing large affairs, and controlling battalions of push buttons and secretaries. Was it ladylike? Was it quite nice? What would the South Side say?