“Yes, but I want to know just which part of it is mine. How much did I sell last Saturday and how much to-day?” persisted Jean.
“Twenty-five packages last Saturday and eighteen this. Forty-three in all. Four dollars and thirty cents in two weeks, and four dollars in your first two weeks. Eight dollars and thirty cents all told, little girl. Two dollars seven and a half cents a week. I call that pretty good for a ten-year-old business woman, don’t you, Mumsey, dear?”
“I call it truly wonderful,” was Mrs. Carruth’s warm reply.
“What do you think of it, Mammy?” cried Constance. “Aren’t we here to be done with after that showing?”
“Done wid what?” promptly demanded Mammy, who had no intention of committing herself before becoming fully informed of all the facts.
“Done everything with. Made use of. Worked for all there is in us. Made to pay for ourselves. Isn’t that right, Mammy? Say ‘yes’ right off. Say ‘yes’ Mammy, because that’s why we are big, and young, and strong, and happy, and anxious to prove that we are the ‘banginest chillern’ that ever were. You’ve said so hundreds of times, you know you have, so don’t try to go back on it now. Aren’t we just right, Mammy? Successful business women and a firm of which you are proud to be a member? The Carruth Corporation, bound to succeed because, unlike other corporations, it has a soul, yes, four of ’em, and can prove that a corporation with four souls can outstrip any other ever associated. Mine’s as light as a feather this minute, so let’s prance,” ended Constance, springing toward Mammy, to catch her hardened hands in her own warm ones, and give a beckoning nod to Jean and Eleanor, who were quick to take her hint. The next instant a circle was formed around Mrs. Carruth’s chair, the girls singing in voices that made the room ring.
“Mammy, dear,
Listen here,
Isn’t this a lark?
Every day,
Work and play,
And each to do her part.”
While poor old Mammy sputtered and protested as she pounded around with them willy-nilly.
“Bangin’est chillern! Bangin’est chillern! Huh! I reckons you is! Huh! Let me go dis minit! Miss Jinny! Miss Jinny! Please ma’am, make ’em quit. Make ’em let loose ob me! Dar! You hear dat? Eben Baltie heer yo’in’ holler. Bres Gawd, I believes he’s ’fronted kase he lef’ outen de cop’ration. Dat’s hit! He’s sure is. Let me go dis minit, I say. He gotter be part ob it,” and giving a final wrench from the detaining hands, Mammy rushed away crying in answer to old Baltie’s neigh, which had reached her ears from his stable:
“Yas, yas, Baltic hawse, Mammy done heard yo’ a-callin’ an’ she’s a-comin’; comin’ to passify yo’ hurt feelin’s case you’s been left outen de cop’ration. Comin’, honey, comin’.”