“I dare say your room at your uncle’s must be far better furnished and larger than this,” she remarked. “I wish for your sake I had a nicer one to offer you.”
“But one can’t have everything in this world,” returned Ethel, forcing a smile, “and I had rather be independent even in a small and poorly furnished ten by ten room than living on somebody else in a palace.”
“That’s a right feeling, I think,” said Mrs. Baker. “I don’t have any great amount of respect for folks that are willing to live at other people’s expense when they might take care of themselves.”
With that she led the way down the stairs and into the store again, where they continued their talk till they came to a definite arrangement. It was that Ethel should come in a day or two and try how she liked the business, and how well she could suit her employer. She told of the needlework she had been doing at odd moments for the past years since her return to the city, and of which she had now accumulated a large supply, and asked if Mrs. Baker would like to buy them of her for sale in the store.
“I don’t know,” was the reply in a meditative tone. “Bring them along if you like and let me see them. I’m inclined to think your better plan would be to buy some muslin and make up the garments; then sell them on your own account here in the store; you may do it and welcome.”
“Oh, thank you! how kind you are!” exclaimed Ethel joyously. Then with a promise to be there early the next day, she bade good-by and hastened on her homeward way in a flutter of excitement. She was, oh, so glad that at last a prospect was opening before her of being some day able to earn money for the support of herself, and her brother and sisters. And how delightful that she could at once relieve her uncles of all expense for her own maintenance. They would surely be pleased that she was to become at once self-supporting; for only a day or two before this she had overheard some talk between her cousins Arabella and Olive in which they spoke of the expense their father and uncle were at in supporting their orphan cousins, pronouncing it a shame that it should be so now when everything was so costly in consequence of the war.
It had made Ethel feel very badly, and greatly increased her longing desire to be able to earn her own living; and surely, taking all this into consideration, her uncles must approve of the effort she was about to make.
And it could hardly be worse to work in that store for so pleasant and kind a woman, as Mrs. Baker evidently was, than to be expected to wait at all times and seasons upon her aunt and cousins, meekly receiving and obeying all their orders, and bearing fault-finding and scolding without retort or remonstrance, no matter how unkind and unjust she might feel it to be. The only hard part would be the separation from her brother and younger sisters, particularly Nannette, who was so accustomed to lean upon her and had been so long her special charge. The tears would fall as she thought of that.
But suddenly realizing that she had certainly been out much longer than she had expected, and would probably be assailed with a torrent of reproaches on her arrival at home, she hastily wiped away her tears and quickened her steps.
Her reception on her arrival was even worse than she had feared.