"Sure I do," she replied; "aber this winter I am going to night school again and next summer might I would get a job as bookkeeper maybe."
"But why don't you get a job in a store somewheres?" he asked.
"I see myself working in a store all day, standing on my feet yet, and when I get through all my wages goes for board!" she replied. "Whereas, here I got anyhow a good room and board, and all what I earn I could put away in savings bank. I worked in a store long enough, Mr.——"
"Lubliner," Elkan said.
"——Mr. Lubliner; and I could assure you I would a whole lot sooner do housework," she went on. "Why should a girl think it's a disgrace she should do housework for a living is more as I could tell you. Sooner or later a girl gets married, and then she must got to do her own housework."
"Not if her husband makes a good living," Elkan suggested.
"Sure, I know," she rejoined; "but how many girls which they are working in stores gets not a rich man, understand me, but a man which is only making, say, for example, thirty dollars a week. The most that a poor girl expects is that she marries a poor man, y'understand, and then they work their way up together."
Elkan nodded. Unconsciously he was indorsing not so much the matter as the manner of her conversation, for she spoke with the low voice that distinguishes the Rumanian from the Pole or Lithuanian.
"You are coming from Rumania, ain't it?" Elkan asked.
"Pretty near there," the maid replied. "Right on the border. I am coming here an orphan five years ago; and——"