"No," answered Cecilia, "but I do think we ought to give them a good time, not reform them. Why, they get discipline all day at their work. I wanted to make them forget that, and all their imperfections." She turned with the words to glance about the group of young women who sat in the office of the Girls' Club.
There was a vague murmur. "But—gum—!" Cecilia heard in a voice which held horror.
"My idea," said Annette, in her cool, slow voice, "was to give them higher ideals, and to teach them not to wear those horrid, pink silk blouses, you know. Teach them that it isn't nice to chew gum, and,—ah,—well, give them a larger life."
"How are you going to give it?" asked Cecilia. "I see what you are going to destroy, but what are you going to put in their places? I think a certain amount of pink is necessary. It has to be very bright, for there is so little of it. It has to reach a long way."
Annette didn't think this worth answering. She simply raised her shoulders and eyebrows in a gesture denoting suffering tolerance and pity. Then she turned to a neighbour and spoke in an undertone. They laughed, and Cecilia flushed.
"Are you an upholder of the green velvet 'throw' on the parlour organ, Miss Madden?" asked a young woman, noted for her bizarre dress.
"I am when the green velvet is the only possible beauty for them,—the only reachable one. I think it's so narrow," she went on heatedly, "to make them enjoy themselves just in our way,—to inflict our likes and dislikes because it's possible to do so. I want to give these girls what they consider a good time, and what they want. Patterns for good times differ. I want dances instead of classes in art. They need them."
"But, my dear,—gum, and those fearful frocks! Annette meant to tell them not to wear cheap laces, but to dress plainly, and suitably to their station," explained a drab young lady whose own dress looked as if it had been designed for a futurist ball.
Cecilia sighed. She saw a band of heavy-eyed and tired-out girls denied their little cravings for beauty. She saw them laying aside pink blouses which brought a faint pink into their small, starved souls. She saw them trying to be ladies, and losing the little solace of "spear-mint gum," and roses of cabbage size and architecture on their cheap hats.
"I think they need the pink," said Cecilia. "If their dress is criticised I think the Club is failing in its mission. Every one will criticise them, few will love them. Let's leave their manners and their dresses to their own management. Let us just try to make them forget the factories, and the flat crowded full of children. I wanted to give them a place where they could bring their beaux."