Bobbie, General Manager: A Novel

by Olive Higgins Prouty

I flushed with rage. Palace nothing!

"I think," said a little Jewess by the name of Elsie Weil, "it's too bad for Gabriella. I'd hate to have such a room-mate forced on me."

"I don't think Miss Brown ought to take such a girl in at all and make us who pay a thousand dollars a year be intimate with a person we never can know socially," drawled Sarah Platt. "It's hard on her too," she finished patronisingly.

"Oh, don't mind about me," I breathed, ready to explode.

"I'm just tired," another girl broke in, "of having all the teachers, and Miss Brown too, talking and lecturing to us about being nice to Lucy, Lucy, Lucy all the time."

"And the spite and scorn that the child puts on lately," added Sarah, "is perfectly absurd. As if she had anything to back it up!"

"I know," went on the little Jewess, "her family can't be much. You can see that. Did you ever notice the row of old-fashioned family pictures on the back of her chiffonier?"

At that I caught my breath. My dear good family! And without waiting to hear another word I flung open the door. There were six or seven girls before me crowded together in a bunch on a couch in the corner. I felt myself grow suddenly calm as I stood there before them not saying a word, and they staring back at me as if I were an apparition.

"I heard every single word you said," I began slowly, "every single word!" Then my thoughts collected themselves and filed by in the order of soldiers on parade. "I don't care a straw for your opinions. I feel above every one of you. It makes me smile to think I would be the least disturbed by common and uneducated westerners," for Sarah lived in Missouri, "or Jews!" I spat at Elsie Weil. "You needn't any of you trouble about being kind to me. I don't want your kindness. I'm perfectly indifferent to every one of you. I am not here on charity; and as for the pictures on my chiffonier, if you don't like them, lump them, or else keep your eyes at home." I knew I was acting unladylike but I was fired up and couldn't help going on. "My family may not have fashionable photographs, my clothes may be as ugly as mud, but if you knew who my older brother is, if you knew who my father is, if you knew! My father is president of the Vars & Company Woollen Mills; my father is a director in the Hilton County Savings Bank; my father is a state senator; my father—oh, I shan't tell you all he is, because you haven't got enough brains to appreciate it. It would be like telling monkies about Abraham Lincoln!" I stopped just a moment, but no one spoke. All those girls huddled together in a bunch just kept on staring as they would at a rearing horse in a parade, meekly from the sidewalk. "You don't know about anything but clothes and theatres. And let me tell you once for all I don't want anything of any of you." Sarah Platt opened her mouth to speak. I cut her off short. "Keep still, Sarah Platt," I said. "Don't you dare address one word to me!" Oh, I wanted to do something insulting, like sticking out my tongue, or making an ugly face. But instead I just said, "And don't one of you in this room ever assume to speak one word to me as long as you live!" And I turned, stalked out of the room, and went straight upstairs.