She would go to New York, become a stenographer, a secretary to a corporation president, a rich woman, free, responsible.
The fact of making this revolutionary decision so quickly gave her a feeling of power, of already being a business woman.
She galloped up-stairs to the room where her mother was driving the sewing-machine.
“Mumsie!” she cried, “we’re going to New York! I’m going to learn to be a business woman, and the little mother will be all dressed in satin and silks, and dine on what-is-it and peaches and cream—the poem don’t come out right, but, oh, my little mother, we’re going out adventuring, we are!”
She plunged down beside her mother, burrowed her head in her mother’s lap, kissed that hand whose skin was like thinnest wrinkly tissue-paper.
“Why, my little daughter, what is it? Has some one sent for us? Is it the letter from Emma Sessions? What did she say in it?”
“She suggested it, but we are going up independent.”
“But can we afford to?... I would like the draymas and art-galleries and all!”
“We will afford to! We’ll gamble, for once!”