I had just about dived for the telephone book to see who would I call up, when Ma come in, taking off the pink satin cap and wiping her face.
"I made a omlette," said Ma. "Come catch it before it falls!"
And so I called it the noon-whistle though some might of called it a day, and we went in and while we ate only a simple little lunch of the omlette (which we got at first base) and liver and bacon and cold roast beef and a few stewed prunes with the fresh cake, I told Ma about what had happened, and how I had already got after the job.
"Well, Mary Gilligan, you done the right thing!" said Ma. "And what kind of costume are you going to wear?"
"The notices don't say anything about a uniform," I explained to her. "And I'm pretty sure you don't need any. This is the sort of thing our leading society swells are taking up so heavy," I says, "and to do it is not only patriotic but feminine to the core," I says.
"Will you have to stand on the street-corners and worry the life out of folks?" Ma wanted to know.
"Not much!" I says. "That stuff is for the hoi-poli and idle rich and kids and unemployed. That's where some of the new democracy comes in. Us with brains is to do the office work. Them with good hearts only can do theirselves and the country more service in the stores and street-cars selling something that don't belong to them," I says, "and—believe you me—I bet any American gets a funny sensation doing that little thing."
Ma looked real impressed for a minute, showing she hadn't any idea what I was talking about. Then she come back to her main idea with which she had started which you can bet she always does until she gets through with it her own self.
"Well, I think you ought to have something for a uniform," she says. "Say a cap and maybe a trench coat!"
"I wouldn't wear no trench coat around the Forty-Second Street and Broadway trenches," I says. "I wouldn't actually have the nerve to insult the army like that!"