“Never?” Helen asked in a quizzical way. “There are other men besides the millionaire.”
“Yes, dear, I know,” Scoris answered, “but some of them, like me, don’t wish to marry.”
“I have not seen you since morning,” Helen said after a while. “Well, I have been promoted.”
Her duties were in a basement of the store where she was employed and she had discovered that her eyesight was becoming defective. She was told that it was from the glare of the electric light and that she would have to wear glasses after two or three years there. “You cannot tell the colors accurately without them,” the oculist had said.
It was bad enough to have to work in a basement, day by day from one year’s end to another, without having to impair her eyesight. Glasses were her horror, but she must work, and at last she applied to the head manager to give her something where she could work by daylight for at least a part of the day, and was sent up to the dress department.
“You see, Scoris,” she explained, “after my capabilities had been inquired into as a saleswomen, then I had to be looked over for all the world as if I was a horse for sale. I passed on the strength of my figure, height and ladylike appearance. The humiliating ordeal was trying, but I won’t have to wear those glasses, thank goodness, and, do you know, Scoris, my salary will be raised. But I have to get a new tailor-made gown with a train, made in the latest style, so as to make the best appearance.
“Well,” Scoris remarked, “it is very nice to be dressed well and I am pleased you are going to be out of that basement. I felt uneasy about your eyes. I have seen so many people who had to give up work altogether on account of the long hours under the electric light. Especially when their work is steady all day, as yours has been. Now, my work is more trying to the eyes than yours, and if I had to use electric light it would blind me, even with my shorter hours.”
The next evening Helen came home in her new dress, walking rather slowly, paying more attention to the holding up of her skirt than to her surroundings. She walked past her own door before she noticed it. Scoris meeting her, she exclaimed:
“Do you know this dress has cost me so much that it will take me over two months to pay for it, and when the weekly amount is taken out of my salary I won’t have as much as I did in the basement? No wonder they pay more for this kind of work, or agree to, for in reality, they don’t pay as much, as we have to get new gowns every three months so as to be in style.”
“Never mind,” said Scoris, “it won’t last many years, for the society is gradually gathering in all the industries. Then we will only have to work about half the time that we do now and have more holidays, and rest. I have just been reading the society’s paper for this month. Listen and see what you think of this.