She could marry, but no one seemed to want her, except old Henry Carson, the widower, with catarrh and three children, who called on her and her mother once in two weeks, and would propose whenever she encouraged him to. This she knew scientifically. She had only to sit beside him on the sofa, let her hand drop down beside his. But she positively and ungratefully didn’t want to marry Henry and listen to his hawking and his grumbling for the rest of her life. Sooner or later one of The Boys might propose. But in a small town it was all a gamble. There weren’t so very many desirable young men—most of the energetic ones went off to Philadelphia and New York. True that Jennie McTevish had been married at thirty-one, when everybody had thought she was hopelessly an old maid. Yet here was Birdie Mayberry unmarried at thirty-four, no one could ever understand why, for she had been the prettiest and jolliest girl in town. Una crossed blessed matrimony off the list as a commercial prospect.
She could go off and study music, law, medicine, elocution, or any of that amazing hodge-podge of pursuits which are permitted to small-town women. But she really couldn’t afford to do any of these; and, besides, she had no talent for music of a higher grade than Sousa and Victor Herbert; she was afraid of lawyers; blood made her sick; and her voice was too quiet for the noble art of elocution as practised by several satin-waisted, semi-artistic ladies who “gave readings” of Enoch Arden and Evangeline before the Panama Study Circle and the Panama Annual Chautauqua.
She could have a job selling dry-goods behind the counter in the Hub Store, but that meant loss of caste.
She could teach dancing—but she couldn’t dance particularly well. And that was all that she could do.
She had tried to find work as office-woman for Dr. Mayberry, the dentist; in the office of the Panama Wood-Turning Company; in the post-office; as lofty enthroned cashier for the Hub Store; painting place-cards and making “fancy-work” for the Art Needlework Exchange.
The job behind the counter in the Hub Store was the only one offered her.
“If I were only a boy,” sighed Una, “I could go to work in the hardware-store or on the railroad or anywhere, and not lose respectability. Oh, I hate being a woman.”
§ 3
Una had been trying to persuade her father’s old-time rival, Squire Updegraff, the real-estate and insurance man, that her experience with Captain Golden would make her a perfect treasure in the office. Squire Updegraff had leaped up at her entrance, and blared, “Well, well, and how is the little girl making it?” He had set out a chair for her and held her hand. But he knew that her only experience with her father’s affairs had been an effort to balance Captain Golden’s account-books, which were works of genius in so far as they were composed according to the inspirational method. So there was nothing very serious in their elaborate discussion of giving Una a job.
It was her last hope in Panama. She went disconsolately down the short street, between the two-story buildings and the rows of hitched lumber-wagons. Nellie Page, the town belle, tripping by in canvas sneakers and a large red hair-ribbon, shouted at her, and Charlie Martindale, of the First National Bank, nodded to her, but these exquisites were too young for her; they danced too well and laughed too easily. The person who stopped her for a long curbstone conference about the weather, while most of the town observed and gossiped, was the fateful Henry Carson. The village sun was unusually blank and hard on Henry’s bald spot to-day. Heavens! she cried to herself, in almost hysterical protest, would she have to marry Henry?