So the good-bys were said, and the two ladies walked away in one direction and Ethel in another.
She visited several of the larger stores, making small purchases with which she had been entrusted, then turned into a side street and was pursuing her homeward way, when passing a drygoods retail store some little fancy articles in the window attracted her attention, and she went in to look at them more closely and price them.
She was waited on by a middle-aged woman of very pleasing countenance, with whom she presently fell into conversation. There were ready-made articles of women’s and children’s wear on the counter and in the show case, and in the back part of the store was a sewing machine with a partly finished garment upon it.
“I see you have some very pretty aprons and other ready-made things for children,” remarked Ethel, “and you make them yourself, I suppose?” glancing toward the machine as she spoke.
“Yes, miss, but I don’t get much time for sewing since I have no one but myself to tend the store; except when mother finds time now and then to wait on a customer. That’s not often, though, for the house-work and the children keep her busy pretty much all the time from daylight to dark.”
“Then I should think it might pay you to have a young girl to wait on customers.”
“Yes, miss, if I could get the right sort; but most young things are giddy and thoughtless, some inclined to be saucy to customers, and others not perfectly honest. I’ve had several that tried me in those ways; then I had a really good, honest, and capable one; but she had to leave because her father and brothers went off to the war, the only sister left at home took sick, and she—Susy, the one that was with me—had to go and help the poor mother to do the work and take care of the invalid.”
A thought—a hope that here might be an opening for her—had struck Ethel, and timidly she put a few questions in regard to the work required, the time that must be given to it, and the wages paid.
The woman answered her queries pleasantly and patiently, then asked her if she knew of someone who wanted such a situation and would be at all likely to suit.
“No, I—I am not certain, but I think perhaps she might if—if her friends won’t object,” stammered Ethel confusedly and with a vivid blush.