When she finished reading the girl crumpled the paper in her hand and filled another glass. She lifted the wine slowly.
“Here’s to you, Mary Randall,” she said.
“That’s a rotten toast,” said the madame.
“Is it?” replied the girl. “Well, let me tell you something. I’d like to go straight out of this house and find Mary Randall and say to her: ‘I’m with you, Mary Randall, and I hope to God you win out.’”
“You don’t think of me,” whined the older woman. “Look what a knock that reform stuff gives business.”
“You!” Nellie’s temper flared into a flame. “Say, you ought to be in jail! Now don’t start anything you can’t finish—” The older woman had got to her feet menacingly. “You don’t deserve no pity. You got into this”—she indicated the gaudily furnished house by a gesture, “with your eyes wide open. You picked out this business for yourself. But with me it’s different.” She leaned across the table defiantly. “Yes, how about me? How about Lottie and Emma—and that poor kid that came here happy because she thought she’d found a decent job? Did we pick out this business? Did we? Not on your life. We walked into a trap and we can’t get out. Yes, and there’s thousands like us all over this country.” She snatched up the bottle and poured more wine. “I’m for you, Mary Randall,” she said, raising the glass to the sunlight. “More power to your elbow!”
Mary Randall read the newspapers in a garret room of a tall lodging house. A pile of letters, in a peculiar shade of dark blue, sealed, stamped and ready for the postoffice, lay in a heap before her. She went through each newspaper carefully, noting the display and studying the “features” of her story that had impressed the newspaper men. At last she laid them down.
“Well, Anna,” she said, smiling, addressing her maid. “We’ve made a good beginning. The town, you see, is interested in us.”
Anna’s ordinarily impassive face smiled back at her mistress’ enthusiasm. Her blue eyes lighted with admiring loyalty. She was blonde, big boned and so strongly built as to look actually formidable. Competency and reserve power fairly radiated from her. Her voice betrayed her Scandinavian ancestry.