"I am not working to save," was the claim of one girl for all. "I'm working for pleasure."
This same girl called me into her room one evening when she was packing to move to another boarding-house where were more young men and better food. I watched her as she put her things into the trunk. She had a quantity of dresses, underclothes with lace and tucks, ribbons, fancy hair ornaments, lace boleros, handkerchiefs. The bottom of her trunk was full of letters from her beau. The mail was always the source of great excitement for her, and having noticed that she seemed especially hilarious over a letter received that night, I made this the pretext for a confidence.
"You got a letter to-night, didn't you?" I asked innocently. "Was it the one you wanted?"
"My, yes," she answered, tossing up a heap of missives from the depths of her trunk. "It was from the same one that wrote me these. I've been going with him three years. I met him up in the grape country where I went to pick grapes. They give you your board and you can make twenty-seven or thirty dollars in a fall. He made up his mind as soon as he saw me that I was about right. Now he wants me to marry him. That's what his letter said to-night. He is making three dollars a day and he owns a farm and a horse and wagon. He bought his sister a $300 piano this fall."
"Well, of course," I said eagerly, "you will accept him?"
She looked half shy, half pleased, half surprised.
"No, my! no," she answered, shaking her head. "I don't want to be married."
"But why not? Don't you think you are foolish? It's a good chance and you have already been 'going with him' three years."
"Yes, I know that, but I ain't ready to marry him yet. Twenty-five is time enough. I'm only twenty-three. I can have a good time just as I am. He didn't want me to come away and neither did my parents. I thought it would 'most kill my father. He looked like he'd been sick the day I left, but he
let me come 'cause he knew I'd never be satisfied until I got my independence."