"That you can do well!" echoed Mrs. O'Brien. "I don't rightly catch your meanin', Ellen. Here you've landed a fine position and your boss is a nice friendly gentleman and now you're turning your back on it all to take up something else! I don't understand you at all, at all! And to think," Mrs. O'Brien concluded brokenly, "of the skirts and shirtwaists that I've stayed up all hours of the night to iron for you, just to keep you lookin' sweet and clean down at that office!"
"Ma, I'm sorry to disappoint you—honest I am. But, don't you see, it's just this way: I've made a bad mistake and the sooner I get out of it the better it will be for me. What I ought to do is something I can do."
"Something you can do, indeed! And will you tell me, me lady, what is it you can do so much better than stenography?"
Ellen flushed but answered firmly: "I can trim hats."
"Trim hats!" screamed Mrs. O'Brien. "What's this ye're sayin'? Do you mean to tell me that you're willing to be a milliner when you might be a stenographer? Why, anybody at all can go and be a milliner!"
"Anybody can't be a fine milliner. And you needn't think there isn't good money in millinery. The head of a big millinery department gets a couple of thousand a year!"
Mrs. O'Brien blinked her eyes. "Has some one been offering you that kind of a position?" Her tears ceased to flow. Once again she beamed on Ellen with all her old-time pride. "Ah, Ellen, you rogue, you're keeping something back! Come, tell me what's happened!"
Ellen sighed helplessly. "Ma, I'm trying to tell you, but you make it awful hard for me. You go off every minute and don't give me a chance to finish."
Mrs. O'Brien folded her hands complacently. "Ellen dear, I won't utter another syllable—I promise you I won't. Now tell me in two words what's happened."
"Well, Ma, it's this: I'm through with stenography and I'm going in for millinery, which I think I can do better."