CHAPTER XVI
It was well for Sunny that her new friend was endowed with a generous and belligerent nature. Having secured for Sunny a position at the Bamberger Emporium, Katy's loyalty to her friend was not dampened when on the third day Sunny was summarily discharged. Hands on hips, Katy flew furiously to her brother's defence, and for the benefit of her brother and sister workers she relieved herself loudly of all her pent-up rage of the months. In true Union style, Katy marched out with Sunny. The excuse for discharging Sunny was that she did not write well enough to fill out the sales slips properly. Nasty as the true reason was, there is no occasion to set forth the details here.
Suffice it to say that the two girls, both rosy from excitement and wrath, arm and arm marched independently forth from the Emporium, Katy loudly asserting that she would sue for her half week's pay, and Sunny anxiously drawing her along, her breath coming and going with the fright she had had.
"Gee!" snorted Katy, as they turned into the street on which was the dingy house in which they lived, "it did my soul good to dump its garbage on that pie-faced, soapy-eyed monk. You don't know what I been through since I worked for them people. You done me a good turn this mornin' when you let out that scream. I'd been expecting something like that ever since he dirtied you with his eyes. That's why I was hangin' around the office, in spite of the ribbon sales, when you went in. Well, here we are!"
Here they were indeed, back in the small ugly room of that fourth floor, sitting, the one on the ricketty chair, and the other on the side of the hard bed. But the eyes of youth are veiled in sun and rose. They see nor feel not the filth of the world. Sunny and Katy, out of a job, with scarcely enough money between them to keep body and soul together, were yet able to laugh at each other and exchange jokes over the position in which they found themselves.
After they had "chewed the rag," as Katy expressively termed it, for awhile, that brisk young person removed her hat, rolled up her sleeves, and declared she would do the "family wash."
"It's too late now," said Katy, "to job hunt this morning. So I'll do the wash, and you waltz over across the street and do the marketin'. Here's ten cents, and get a wiggle on you, because it's 10.30 now, and I got a plan for us two. I'll tell you what it is. There ain't no hurry. Just wait a bit, dearie. First we'll have a bite to eat, though I'm not hungry myself. I always say, though, you can land a job better on a full than a empty stomach. Well, lunch packed away in us, little you and me trots downtown—not to no 125th Street, mind you, but downtown, to Fifth Avenoo, where the swell shops are, do you get me? I'd a done this long ago, for they say it's as easy to land on Fifth Avenoo as it is on Third. It's like goods, Sunny. The real silk is cheaper than the fake stuff, because it lasts longer and is wider, but if one ain't got the capital to invest in it in the first place, why you just have to make the best of the imitation cheese. If I could of dolled myself up like them girls that hold down the jobs on Fifth Avenoo, say, you can take it from me, I'd a made some of them henna-haired ladies look like thirty cents. Now you got the looks, and you got the clothes too. That suit you're wearin' don't look like no million dollars, but it's got a kick to it just the same. The goods is real. I been lookin' at it. Where'd you get it?"