“I should think,” said Ethel, regarding her sister pityingly, “that with your education you’d be above putting yourself on the level with the cheap people who patronize fortune-tellers. People who really have faith that there’s a life to come don’t need such things. They have no place in a Christian home.”
Grace stared at her helplessly. Ethel was an enigma; it was incredible that any one could feel so intensely about so small a matter, or find so complete a joy in making others uncomfortable.
CHAPTER THREE
I
Mrs. Durland, no doubt to show her sympathetic interest in her daughters’ labors, asked innumerable questions every evening when the family gathered at the supper table. As Ethel’s experiences were much less interesting than Grace’s, the burden of these conversations fell largely upon Grace. Whenever Grace mentioned some customer her mother or Ethel knew or knew about, that person was subjected to the most searching analysis. It was incredible that they could be so interested in people of whom they knew only from reading of their social activities in the newspapers.
Ethel’s preoccupations with her church and philanthropic affairs took her away several evenings in the week, and at such times Grace played checkers or sniff with her father while Mrs. Durland read or sewed. The fact that Grace’s earnings averaged higher than Ethel’s made it necessary for Mrs. Durland to soothe any feeling the older daughter manifested as to this disparity.
Grace found no joy in Ethel. Ethel hinted constantly that her work in Gregg and Burley’s office placed her in a class much above that of a salesgirl. She had brought to perfection a kind of cloying sweetness in her attitude toward the other members of the family which Grace found hard to bear. Ethel was at pains to remind her father from time to time that it was due to his lack of foresight and initiative that she had been obliged to become a wage-earner. Her remarks expressed something of the solicitude a mother might manifest toward a slightly deficient child. The effect of this upon Grace was to deepen her affection and sympathy for her father. Several times she persuaded him to go down town with her to a big motion picture house where there was good music. He enjoyed the pictures, laughing heartily at the comics; and laughter had been the rarest of luxuries in Stephen Durland’s life. Mrs. Durland refused to accompany them; all the pictures she had ever seen had been vulgar and she was on a committee of the State Federation to go before the legislature and demand a more rigid censorship.
Grace’s announcement that, on evenings when she went to the French class she had entered with Irene, she would stay down town for supper did not pass unchallenged at the supper table, which she had begun to dread for its cheerlessness and the opportunity it afforded her mother and sister to express their dire forebodings as to the future of the human race. One evening after listening to a reiteration of their predictions of calamity Grace broke the silence in which she usually listened to these discussions.
“I don’t know where you get these ideas, Ethel. You must be unfortunate in your acquaintances if you’re talking from your own knowledge.”
Mrs. Durland rallied at once to Ethel’s support.