“Of course she’s nice. She’s a lot nicer than the members of your club. But it is tough to have a cousin who’s a servant.”
“What else can the poor girl do? She has to earn her living and she can’t choose. She gets much better money than she would clerking.”
“I suppose.”
Ellen was a sore point. She was a cousin of Mrs. Horton’s who had been brought up on her father’s farm and been a person of some consequence in the farming district. Her father had died and Ellen had sold the farm, finding it heavily weighted with mortgages, and come to the city to work. She knew how to do housework and housework suited her, so she went into service quite simply and without feeling herself depreciated in the least. The aggressiveness of the city servant had been left out of her, and while she did not feel herself at all the equal in position of the ladies she worked for, she had no feeling of common interest with the city servant class, so slavishly imitating their mistresses, so insolent of manner and cheap of ideal. Ellen chose her employers with discretion, and always managed to pick ladies. She treated them not as if they were above her, but merely as if they were engaged on a different sort of job, social as well as economic, and in so doing solved the servant problem in her own small way. But she was an unavoidable cause of suffering to Fliss. Every time she came to see the Hortons—and they could not help being glad to see her, for she brought not only presents to Fliss, but an atmosphere of comfort and devotion into that chaotic apartment—she was a torturing reminder to Fliss that her own social position was founded on nothing and that she ate at the table with a person who served at the tables at which she wished to sit. But she somehow did not say anything to Ellen about the way she felt. There was a quiet dignity about the farm girl as well as a generosity that kept Fliss’s complainings in check.
Another thing was that Ellen always had ready money. She was extremely well paid, spent very little on herself and was always ready to finance some small extravagance for Fliss. The Hortons never had enough ready money and it was a satisfaction to Fliss to possess a blouse or an expensive pair of gloves which were really paid for before she wore them. There was physical comfort, even if mental rancor, in being a cousin of Ellen’s.
Mrs. Horton was bringing out that very point now. “Ellen said she’d stop at Scott’s and get some cream cheese and we can have brown bread sandwiches with the salad and coffee. And she said if she bought a lobster there would be lots of time to cook that after she got here. She works so fast and they are sure to play until five, anyway. Coffee, salad, brown bread sandwiches and cake, and your father can just piece on what’s left over, when he comes home.”
The telephone interrupted them. Fliss answered it in the omnipresent hope of something interesting, and it seemed to galvanize her drooping spirits. As if it were necessary to touch up her appearance in order to get her spirits into action, at the first words she heard she twisted back her hair and drew her negligee around her with her free hand. Her face, so listless a moment before, began to sparkle—to live again—and her voice changed from its discouraged tone into one which fairly sang with interest and desire to please and to coquet.
“Of course you didn’t get me out of bed—no, not tired at all, thought it was fun—I’m glad you liked to dance with me—so do I—I’d love to. What do you suggest?—The music there is good, but the food really too terrible—why I think so, who else is going?—to-morrow night, then, about eight-thirty—yes, you can find it easily enough if you can read numbers. We’re flat dwellers, you know—cliff dwellers, you might say—208 Gladstone Street, Flat H. That’s three flights up—if you groan I’ll meet you with a glass of water—all right—good-by.”
Smiling still, clinging to the atmosphere of jocularity, Fliss hung up the receiver. Her mother watched her without questioning. It was curious that there was not any of the eager curiosity in her face which animates most women in contemplation of their daughter’s flirtations. Mrs. Horton had been well trained to keep out of things. Perhaps she felt that even her daughter’s successful marriage would mean nothing to her. She would be organized and managed through the proper things to do, but there would be no confidence, no dependence. So she waited for Fliss to speak.
Fliss did, though more in reflection than as if anxious to produce any effect on her listener. “Funny—I didn’t know he was at all taken with me. I only met him last night. Mother, I’ve simply got to have that red georgette mended before to-morrow night. I haven’t a rag to wear and maybe if that were fixed up a little—it isn’t dressy at the Palladium and with my black hat I could make the georgette do.”