All these sentences, spoken in the man-of-the-world tone, which indicates that the person is talking for the sake of filling the time, and all the while his practiced eye was taking in the group—Judge Burnham with a slightly embarrassed manner and somewhat flushed face; his elegant, high-bred wife, who was a trifle pale as she was wont to be under strong feeling of any sort; and the two girls, in outre attire, standing a little apart, with wide eyes and flaming cheeks, staring painfully. The criminal lawyer seemed to think that the position demanded more words from him. “You are the victims of the usual American nuisance, I see,” with the slightest possible inclination of his head toward the two. “The inefficiency of hired help is really the social puzzle of this country, I think. Foreigners have immensely the advantage of us. Just returning a relay of the condemned sort I suppose?”
There was the rising inflection to his sentence which marks a question, and yet he rattled on, precisely like a man who expects no answer. Was it because the train sounded its warning-whistle just then, that Judge Burnham, though his face flushed and his eyes flashed, did not correct the criminal lawyer’s mistake?
CHAPTER XXII.
“THAT WHICH SATISFIETH NOT.”
FAIRLY seated in the train, Ruth Burnham gave herself up to gloominess over her own planning. The episode with the famous criminal lawyer not having served to sweeten her way, she speedily determined on making as little a cross of the rest of it as she could, too fully realizing that, plan as she would, the way was a cross. She still shrank from the fashionable “Madame’s,” and her fashionable corps of workers. Perhaps the worriment was what she deserved for being so fashionable in her desires that she could not bring herself to look up an obscure back street with a modest sign, and thus help along the large army of workers, who can not be fashionable—though really, there are two sides to even that question. She understood that as a rule, the work done from that back street would be a continual source of mortification to her—a constant strain on her temper, so long as the garments lasted. After all, it is not so much the desire to be in the height of the fashion that sends women to the extravagantly high-priced modistes, as a knowledge of the fact that as a rule, the low-priced ones do not understand their business, and will succeed in making a bungle of any work which they undertake. When there shall arise a class of women who have carefully learned how to cut and make ordinary garments, in the best manner, the cry of hard times, among such workers, will be less frequently heard.
Ruth concluded not to risk contact with chance acquaintances in street-cars; but, directly she reached the city, took a carriage to a store where she was a stranger, and did some rapid transforming work. Two stylish wraps, selected with due reference to their qualifications for covering much objectionable toilet underneath—selected, too, with careful reference to the height and shape and complexion of the wearers; then gloves that were strong and neat-fitting and shapely; then hats of easily-donned stamp, gracefully, yet slightly trimmed; and, really, Judge Burnham would hardly have recognized his daughters. Ruth surveyed them with satisfaction; and, if they could have been fitted at the “Madame’s,” without removing those stylish mantles, she would have drawn a sigh of relief. As it was, she still had that to dread, and a real ordeal it was. Those who condemn her for exhibiting much false pride and foolish lack of independence have probably never been tried in the same way. You have, of course, observed that people’s own peculiar trials are the ones for which they have sympathy. They are harder, too, to bear, than any other person’s.
Ruth was not one whit behind the multitude, in her way of thinking about herself. As she stood in the “Madame’s” apartments and endured the well-bred stares and the well-bred impudence—for there really is such a thing as what might be called well-bred impudence—she set her teeth hard, and ruled that the color should not rush into her face, and, also, that the “Madame” should have no more of her custom, from this time forth. And yet, when she came to cooler moments, she tried to reason within herself, as to how the woman was to blame. What had she said, or looked, that was not, under the circumstances, most natural?