Mrs. Mundy turned and looked at me queerly. She has tremendous admiration for what she calls my book-learning, and sees no incongruity in my ignorance of many things with which she is familiar. My ignorance, indeed, she thinks it her duty to conserve, and already we have had some differences of opinion as to what I should know and not know of the life about us. There are a good many things I have got to make Mrs. Mundy take in more definitely. She thinks of me still as a girl. I am not. I am a woman twenty-six years old.
"Half the girls you've seen coming home from work, half who live around the Square, haven't any people here. What they have is a room in somebody's house. Many are from the country or from small towns. Over sixteen thousand work in the factories alone. You don't suppose they all have homes, do you?—have some one who waits up for them at night, some one who cares when they come in?"
Before I could answer she stopped her dusting and, head on the side and hands on her hips, listened. "There's the iceman at the kitchen door," she said, relievedly. "I'll have to go and let him in."
It is this I cannot understand, this unusual evasiveness on Mrs. Mundy's part. She is the least mysterious of persons, is, indeed, as open as the day, and it is unlike her to act as she has done. From childhood I have known her. Up to the time of Aunt Matilda's marriage to Mr. Chesmond she made my clothes, and for years, in all times of domestic complications has been our dependence. When I decided to live for a while in the house once owned by my grandfather, I turned to her in confidence that she would care not only for my material needs, but that from her I could get what no one else could give me—an insight into scenes and situations commonly concealed from surface sight.
Her knowledge of life is wide and varied. With unfailing faith and cheerful courage and a habit of seeing the humorous side of tragic catastrophes, she has done her work among the sick and forsaken, with no appeal to others save a certain few; and only those who have been steadied by her strong hands, and heartened by her buoyant spirit, and fed from her scant store, have knowledge or understanding of what she means to the section of the city where the poor and lowly live. Bit by bit I am learning, but even yet it is difficult to make her tell me all she does, or how and when she does it.
It was partly because of certain talks with her that I decided to come to Scarborough Square. If I could make but a few understand what she understands—so understand that the sending of a check would not sufficiently relieve them from obligation, from responsibility. But how can I make clear to others what is not clear to me?
It will not be Bettina's fault if I do not become acquainted with my new neighbors in Scarborough Square. By the calendar's accounting Bettina's years are only thirteen, but in shrewdness of penetration, in swiftness of conclusion, and in acceptance of the fact that most people are queer she is amazingly mature. Her readiness to go with me anywhere I wish to go is unfailing, but save on Saturdays and Sundays we can only pay our visits in the afternoon. It is late when she gets from school, and dark soon after we start, but with Bettina I am safe.
Outside and inside of the house our roles are reversed. Concerning my books and my pictures, concerning the people who ride in their own automobiles, who go to the theatre whenever they wish, to the fine churches with beautiful music and paid pews; the people who give parties and wear gorgeous clothes and eat mushrooms and terrapin—which she considered inexplicable taste—she will ask me countless questions; but outside of the house she becomes the teacher and I the taught. Just what I am learning she hardly understands. Much that is new to me is commonplace to her; and she does not dream that I often cannot sleep at night for remembering what the day has shown me. To-morrow we are going to see a Mrs. Gibbons, whose little boy, eleven years of age, is the head of his mother's house—the support of her family.
CHAPTER VII
Hands in her pockets, Bettina looked at me disappointedly. "It's very cold," she said. "Why don't you wear your fur coat?"