But Petra’s fingers holding the cigarette were shaking. The trembling began at her elbow, resting on her knee, but it was most visible in the fingers. She said, in a voice that gave the lie to her shaking fingers, “It is very nice of you to offer me a job, Doctor Pryne. How much is the salary?”
Clare had made a mistake in insisting on the cigarette! She should have presented Petra with a spear, not an English Oval, as an emblem of the girl’s unyielding hardihood. The cigarette, moved to exquisite vibrations in her trembling fingers, merely robbed Petra’s overt hardness of its authenticity. Oh, yes, Clare would do better to play up the Diana in the girl, not a sophistication which did not exist.
“Eighteen dollars a week,” he said. “That is a small living wage, I know, but I am afraid it is all the job is really worth. And prices are down. Food, rooms, clothes, everything. They have tumbled. You ought to be able to manage on eighteen a week and get quite a lot of fun out of it, Petra.”
In saying this so lightly he remembered, of course, the millions of unemployed throughout the country, and his heart smote him at his careless words. But he did not waver in his purpose. Petra’s need of employment was different from theirs, it is true, but no less real. Her situation, as much as theirs, was desperate.... But what was she saying!
“I don’t have to worry about living on your eighteen a week, Doctor Pryne. I never could, you know. Just my dresses cost much more than that. Besides, Clare doesn’t charge me board!”
“Petra darling! There is nothing in this offer to make you angry! Doctor Pryne got the idea from you yourself, this afternoon, that you wanted to leave Green Doors and be independent. That is why he thought of this job. He thought you were unhappy because you weren’t independent and living a life of your own. Whatever did you say to make him think that?”
Petra hesitated. Any one looking at her that moment could actually see her deciding among a choice of answers to her stepmother. Lewis did look at her and see. But Clare could not wait for the fabrication, whatever it was to be. She went on: “But Doctor Pryne has convinced me of one thing, Petra. He has made me ashamed, not for you, for myself. Your two thousand dollars’ allowance is absurd. With people hungry right in Boston. When you spend it only for clothes! It ought to be one thousand, darling. And the other thousand you can give, yourself, any way you like to do it, to charity.”
Petra’s cigarette was burning itself away in an ashtray between herself and Clare. Its smoke ascended in thick violet ribbons. Lewis felt that she was thinking with lightning speed,—but unguessable thoughts. Clare was as much in the dark as himself as to Petra’s thoughts, he supposed; but he suspected that, unlike himself, she did not know her own ignorance. Against those ribbons of violet smoke Petra looked like a sibyl—enigmatical—young—divinely young.
“Do you mean that you are cutting my allowance in half? Now, like this,—without warning?” She spoke as if Lewis were not there, as if she and Clare were alone. Her voice was more astonished than it was angry.
“No. I wouldn’t do that, Petra. You know I wouldn’t. You can still have the second thousand for charity, to give any way you like. I will do the same myself. I had been thinking of it for myself as a matter of fact—even before my talk with Doctor Pryne about you to-night. I meant to go over my dress bills and, beginning next month, budget myself to half as much as I am accustomed to spend. Merely giving money outright, the way I have been doing, isn’t enough. It is actual sacrifice that counts.”