The girl hitched up her shoulders. "The fact of it is, I couldn't get used to it. Never tried anything like that before."
She looked about cautiously and then resumed in a confidential voice,
"To tell the truth, I was just forced into it. Pa and ma didn't want me to come to Chicago, but I couldn't make out that I was going to have any terrible great show there in Pewaukee. I didn't s'pose it was going to be so awful hard to find something to do in a big place like this. But I made up my mind, all the same, that I wasn't going to cave in and go back to Wisconsin—not straight off, anyway. Kept right on trotting about. Any port in a storm, says I. And when I met that good old soul in the intelligence office, that settled it. She only wanted a second girl; but I thought I could stand it."
"Couldn't you?"
He found a place in a quiet corner.
"I didn't tell ma, though, that I was living out. I wrote to her that I was clerking—ten dollars a week. Ten dollars!—I'm looking for the girl that gets more than six. I don't know what the folks would have thought if they'd known of me a-being ordered around by a lot of young fellers—run and fetch and carry for a parcel of strangers. It don't come natural to me to be bossed, I can tell you."
"But Mrs. Gore used you well?"
"She did, for a fact. But it wasn't the sort of thing I wanted at all. So I told her I guessed I'd go. 'Well,' says she, sort of resigned like, 'if you've made up your mind to, you must, I s'pose'; she was sorry to lose me, I know. She walked to the-basement door with me to say good-by—with her specs on top of her head. 'Be a good girl,' says she, 'and let us hear from you'—'most exactly what ma said when I came away. Gray hair, just like ma's, too. 'Yes, ma'am,' says I. I didn't say 'ma'am' because I thought I was a servant—I wasn't; but because she was older and because I had a respect for her. And so I shall let her hear from me; when I get along a little further I'm going to call on her. And I'm going to get along, let me tell you; I haven't jumped on to this hobby-horse of a town just to stay still."