Well I am glad the family finds my letters interesting these things is sure different from anything that ever happened to me before and I guess to any girl from Camden New Jersey.
Well, I am having a funny time right now in the Elite Beauty Parlors. The girls is just ate up with curiosity they know I have got some big fellow on my string somebody seen me with him somewhere and they cant make out why I wont tell. They say I’m a boob to think I can hide him they will sure track him down but I just laugh at them. There is an extension phone in Madame Lafferty’s private office and whenever I am asked to the phone she is always listening in but all she hears is that a gentleman named Mr. Brown says for me to meet him at the usual place and that dont tell her much. Sometimes I write these little notes to you in between customers, and of course that intreegs the girls a lot too and Ada Huggins—her that has changed her name to Adaire the silly fool—she says, “What is it Mame are you writing your mamewars?” That is supposed to be smart but it aint so very.
Well just now the phone rung and it was Mr. Edgerton, and he asked me if I could get off at five this afternoon and meet him and of course that wasnt easy because it is our busiest hour but he said it was a very urgent matter so I said I would try my best to be there. And then I went to ask the Madame and gee she was sour she says, “What is this that I am running a beauty parlor or a date ranch?” You see she pretends the girls aint supposed to meet the customers outside but gee what a howl there would be if I was to ask for enough wages to buy my own dinners! And we all know she goes out herself and meets a gent with a glass in one eye and his hair plastered over his bald head, he calls himself Count Skrimsky but I’m telling you he’s no count in any way you mean it. Well I says she can dock my pay or I’ll stay two hours of my afternoon off and then she tries to find out who is the gentleman and I tell her it is a government matter and I have been forbid to say and you can imagine how much pleased that makes her!
P. S. Oh Mom I have just had the most wonderful adventure that ever happened to a girl. Mr. Edgerton knew just what he had in mind when he got me to meet him at five o’clock it was to get to some store before it shut up! Oh Mom he must of saw that my purse was empty the last time we went out and he must of got sorry about it. Anyhow we strolled down the street and there was the Bon Ton Store with all the lovely things in the windows and he kind of led me over to look and he says, “They make lots of pretty things now-a-days dont they.” And I says, “Yes, they do,” but kind of feeble because I wouldnt have him think I was thinking I would ever like to own such things. But he says, “Let’s us go in and have a look at them.”
So we went in and he went to the suit department and he says to the clerk, “My daughter finds the winters in Washington more severe than she expected and she wants to get something nice and warm,” he says, just like that and gee I nearly faints at the nerve of him. But of course I have got to go through with it so I says, “Oh, no, Papa, not now!” but he says, “Yes, right now, I insist.”
So the girl takes one look at him and starts to bringing out the expensive things and I gasps, “Oh, that will cost too much!” But he says, “You let me tend to this daughter,” and so of course all I can do is to stand there. And so he gets me a tailored suit brown like I had on but oh what a difference there can be in clothes! It is soft and fuzzy and warm like it was an overcoat and yet it is lighter than my old suit!
And then he says, “We shall have to have a hat and things to match this suit,” and then I starts to argue that my old hat will do but he says it wont and before I get through he takes me round to the shoe department and the glove counter—it is after the hours and the place is closed and the clerks is tired and looking cross but he cheers them up with a tip and so we finish the rounds. And I keep them all on and when I am going out you would not know it is the same girl that come in. The clerk wants to know where they shall send the old things and I don’t dare to give the address because you see it had ought to be the name of some swell hotel so I says I am moving and I will send for them; and of course I will send myself tomorrow.
Well, Mom, I am so rattled I can hardly talk and I says, “Mr. Edgerton, this aint right I hadnt ought to of let you do it.” But he says real serious that the ideas I have give him is worth what he has paid and there wasnt no other way he could of got them. “But I didnt expect to be paid for them,” I says and he says, “Well I am paid for them myself and why should you work for nothing?” he says. “I have got to keep close to the great heart of the plain people,” he says, “and to know how they feel and talk and how else am I to do it? The only thing you got to be sure is that getting fixed up swell dont spoil you so that you forget how the plain people feel.”
But I says, “No you dont need to worry about that,” I says, “because I got my mother and father and my kid brothers and sisters back in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey and how could I forget how they feel?”