Mrs. Smith showed me how to make a bed just right, and to dust and sweep, to iron the clothes and to do all the things that women must know if they keep a house clean. But finally she said she thought I would do, and one day she went over town to a friend of hers that lives up in the Bronx. What she told her I don't know, but anyway I got a job and I went over to my room and packed my things, and I have been here two months. It was hard at first, as I didn't know how to manage, and couldn't make my head save my legs. But I got along somehow, although at night I used to be so dead tired that two or three times I cried myself to sleep. The woman ain't as nice as Mrs. Smith, she is kind of suspicious of me, and watches me a lot, and she feels I ought to know more than I do and tells me to do things without telling me how. But I am going to stick it out. The main trouble is that it is devilish lonesome. At night after I get the dishes done, there ain't no place to go except a little room which looks out on a courtyard, and there is nothing to do and nobody to talk to, and I set by myself trying to think things all over. Sometimes I think I am a fool to work like a dog a whole week and only get six dollars for it, and then again I remember all Mrs. Smith said to me, and the nice letters she writes me telling me to be brave and that I am doing the square thing. My afternoons off I don't take, because I don't want to see the old crowd, and I don't know no one else. Every two weeks I have been over to see Billy, but it costs quite a lot, and after I pay $3.50 a week for his board, I ain't what you call a J. D. Rockefeller. I used always to take the kid some little thing, but now it has to be so darned little you can't see it. The woman next door has got a baby, and she knits things for it, and I asked the woman I worked for if she would ask the woman to learn me how to knit. She was awful nice about it, and I bought a lot of white yarn, and nights up in my room I made Billy and Paul each a jacket, and now I am making them some mittens, so when it gets cold they can wear them when they play outside. Next week after I get my pay, I am going to get some of that grey pusey yarn and make them each a cap.

One night I got so blue I almost died, and I went downtown to see Irene who is back from St. Louis. I had an awful good time, a lot of fellows and girls come into Irene's room, and I sent one of the boys out for some oysters and showed them some fine stunts I could do with the chafing dish. They was crazy to know where I was and what I was doing but I wouldn't tell them, as I knowed they wouldn't understand. I suppose there is something wrong in me somewhere, but it seemed awful nice to see all the crowd again, and hear them talk and laugh and even the old cigarette smoke smelled good. There didn't one of them seem to have any trouble nor have to work hard, and I thought of how they could sleep in the morning, and how I would have to get up when my old alarm clock went off at half past six. For a minute I thought I wouldn't go back, then I thought of Mrs. Smith and how bad she would feel if I didn't stick, so I said, "Oh, me for my little room," and I left the crowd at half past ten, sort of the middle of the day for most of them. But I ain't been unhappy, though I didn't know there was so little money in the world. Why, it seems funny not to be able to buy anything at all. When you look in the shop windows and see all the fluffy petticoats and the pretty collars and the silk stockings and the fancy shoes, and you know you can't buy one of them, it makes you feel sore all over. Why, I think every body ought to take their hat off to a pretty girl who is pegging along on six or eight a week, and who wants pretty things just the same as all women do and who knows all she has got to do is to give a little nod to get them, I say, them is the people that ought to have a statue up on that hall of fame on the Hudson.

I had to buy two maid's dresses when I come here, plain black with little white collars and cuffs, and in the afternoon the woman makes me wear a dinkey little cap on my head which makes my hair look curlier than ever though I brush it down as best I can. Callers kind of looked surprised when they see me first, I guess cause I am kind of thin now and my eyes sort of fill my face.

Billy is looking fine. He is most as big as Paul and he has learned a lot of things. Mr. Smith takes the kids with him in the woods and Billy knows the names of trees and plants and can tell the Robin's call from the Blue Bird's whistle. Mrs. Smith reads little stories to the children and they know their A B C's already, and by the time Billy is ten, he will have lots more book-learning than I have now.

Now don't write me a rotten letter, Kate, and don't put any of the gang on to try to queer me nor to try and come and talk to me, cause house work ain't no joke for a person who ain't never done nothing, and sometimes I feel all in and something told me at the wrong time, might make me throw the whole thing up. And I don't want to. I want to make good if it is only at housework, and if I can, I am going to stick to it till there's skating down below.

Nan.

X

Dear Kate:

I am back in my old room and I guess there is where I belong. I did intend to stick, and I didn't think I would ever see this old room again, but here I am, and guess here I will stay. You know I was getting along real well in that place where I worked, and things got much easier, as I kind of learned to save my steps and plan the work, and it didn't make me so tired as it did at first. I had saved up twelve dollars too, and was going to buy Billy's winter clothes and send you five, then the darn thing fell. I had been over on Sunday to see Billy and was chasing along home about half past ten at night along 33rd Street to catch the subway, when one of them old rounders passed me by and stuck his old face down into mine and as I didn't say nothing, he kept chasing after me and saying something in a low voice. I pretended I didn't hear and went on a little faster and he kept right after me. When we got near to Fourth Avenue, he came up close to me and said, "Don't be in such a hurry, little girl," and I didn't say nothing, then he stuck his face right down into mine and said something, and it just made me sick, and before I knew what I did I slapped his dirty old mouth for him. He stood still a minute, and almost turned white and then what do you think the piker did? He called the cop from the corner and had me arrested for speaking to him. It was Casey who knew me and I told Casey he was a liar, and Casey said to the man, "Are you going to court and make a charge against this girl?" And the man says, "I am, and if you don't take her I will have you broke." I honestly think Casey believed me, but he couldn't do nothing, and they took me down to Jefferson Court. I hoped I would never see that place again, but there I was with the girls and the bums and the plain closemen and the cops and the shister lawyers and the probation officer who knew me at once as your sister, and I kinda felt I was up against it. But I told my story straight to the Judge, and the man told his, and of course the Judge took his word against mine and he fined me ten dollars or ten days. When I thought of that ten dollars and what it meant and how hard I had saved and scrimped for it, and how I had gone without things and that Billy wouldn't have the winter things that he ought to have, I just lost my head and I told the Judge he was an old fool, that if he couldn't tell a lie from the truth, he had not orter be a setting up there like an old brooding hen. I told him he didn't see nothing but crooks, and he couldn't tell a crook from a decent person and then he got back at me by saying, "Did I say ten dollars or ten days, I made a mistake, I meant ten dollars and ten days," and I had to go to the Island. I don't think I was ever so broke up in my life, it didn't seem I was getting a square deal. I suppose I did say things I shouldn't have, cause I was so mad I couldn't see and then I cried all night. I wrote a letter to Mrs. Smith and told her just how it was and asked her to go and see the woman I worked for and tell her about it and not blame me. Now, Mrs. Smith believed me and came over to see me on the Island but that other woman didn't believe me and went down to the night court and saw the probation officer and I guess she got the idea you built the Jefferson Court with your fines. Anyway, she said she didn't want me in her house no more. I guess she is afraid I would hurt the dishes. When I got out I went up to see her and her face was hard and nasty and she wouldn't take my word at all. I asked her if she seen a thing out of the way for four months, if I hadn't done my work right and if I hadn't stayed in nights and been as good as any girl she ever had. She said "yes" to them all, but she didn't believe in encouraging vice and she never could tell what I might do because I come of a bad family. She got your record from A to Z and she even knew about father and she acted as if she thought perhaps, that all the cussedness of the family was stored up in me and might have busted any minit.