She shook her head. "I donno," she says. "I used to think about that, some."
We had the rest of the beans and bread, and then I started out. After she got the baby dressed, Mis' Bingy was going out to set in the green place where we'd been yesterday.
"I could work," she says, "if it wasn't for the baby. She's lots of work, too. But that don't earn us nothing."
She was always making lace, and she'd brought along a lot she made—the bottom drawer of the washstand was full of it. Making that, and tending the baby, kep' her occupied; but, as she said, it didn't earn us anything.
I had the other card that Mr. Ember had given me, and that morning I started out to find the man. John Carney, the name was, and it was a long ways to walk. It was in a big office building. And when I got to the right door, a smart young guy behind a fence says, What did I want to see Mr. Carney about, and wouldn't one of the men in the office do? I just give him Mr. Ember's card to take in, and when he'd gone I felt glad; because if it had been the day before, when I hadn't seen that room full of folks nor heard the woman in the pinkish dress speak like she done, I bet I'd of said to that young guy: "You go and chase yourself to the pasture and quit your fresh lip." Just like Lena Curtsy would have said.
I had to wait quite a while till they sent for me. And when I went in the office, long and like a parlor in a picture, I stood in front of a big gray man whose shoulders were the principal part. And there was a little young man there, sitting loose in a big easy chair, looking at a newspaper. I noticed the little young man particular, because he didn't look like anything, and he acted like so much. He didn't belong in the office. He just happened.
"What can I do for you, madam?" says the big gray man, with Mr. Ember's card in his hand. "Mr. Carney is absent in Europe."
"Oh," I says, "then I don't know. Mr. Ember thought Mr. Carney'd maybe help me to get a job."
The little young man spoke up.
"I expect you'll meet up with a good deal of that kind of thing, Bliss," he says, glancing up from his newspaper and glancing down again. "Everybody sends 'em to my uncle. He—makes it a point to know of things. He's a regular employment agency, d'y'see, for the jobless friends of his friends. I—er—shouldn't let it bother me."