"It's wonderful you got a job right off! Ain't she in luck! Why, most has to get spoken of weeks in advance—introduced by friends, too!"
Mika said: "My name's been up two months at my sister's shop. The landlady told us about your coming, Miss Ballard. We was going to speak for you to our foreladies."
Here my huge hostess, who during my stay stood close to my side as though she thought I needed her motherliness, put her hand on my shoulder.
"Yes, mon enfant, we didn't want you to get discouraged in a strange place. Ici nous sommes toute une famille".
"All one family?" Oh, no, no, kind creature, hospitable receiver of a stranger, not all one family! I belong to the class of the woman who, one day by
chance out of her carriage, did she happen to sit by your side in a cable car, would pull her dress from the contact of your clothes, heavy with tenement odours; draw back as you crushed your huge form down too close to her; turn no look of sisterhood to your face, brow-bound by the beads of sweat, its signet of labour.
Not one family! I am one with the hostess, capable even of greeting her guest with insolent discourtesy did such a one chance to intrude at an hour when her presence might imperil the next step of the social climber's ladder.
Not one family, but part of the class whose tongues turn the truffle buried in pate de foie gras; whose lips are reddened with Burgundies and cooled with iced champagnes; who discuss the quality of a canard a la presse throughout a meal; who have no leisure, because they have no labour such as you know the term to mean; who create disease by feeding bodies unstimulated by toil, whilst you, honestly tired, really hungry, eat Irish stew in the atmosphere of your kitchen dining-hall.
Not one family, I blush to say! God will not have it so.
The Irish stew had all disappeared, every vestige.