Then I wrote to Luke. You'd think that would have been harder, but it was easier. I says:
"Dear Luke:
"They told you, I guess, how I come off with Mis' Bingy. But, Luke, I would of come anyway, if I could. I thought it was all right to be your wife, but I want to see if there is anything else I would rather do. So I'm not engaged to you any more. If I come back, and if you are not married to somebody else, all right, if you still want me by that time. But I don't think I'll come back for a long time. I told you I didn't think I loved you, and you said I had to marry somebody. But now I don't, Luke, because I got a job. Please don't think hard of me. This was meant right, Luke.
"Cosma."
I wrote another letter, too—just because it felt good to be writing it. It said:
"Dear Mr. Ember:
"I want you to know I done as you said. I left home, and I left Luke, and I'm going to see if there is anything in the world for me to be that I can get to be. I've got a job, and I've got you to thank for that. Mr. Carney's nephew got it for me.
"There's something I want to say to you that's hard to say. I want you to know that the walk that morning was the nicest thing that ever happened to me. It made me see that the cheap me—the vulgar me, like you said—wasn't the only me there is to me. Clear inside is something that can be another me. I knew that before, in the grove, and early in the morning, like I said. But I didn't think I could ever let it out enough to be me. I didn't trust it, not till you came.
"And that's what makes me think I can be different, the way you said to. I'd hate for you to think I was just the sassy girl I acted that morning. There's something else I can't bear to have you think—that's that I didn't know how different I acted at the table from what you did. I did know.
"I've got a job, and Mis' Bingy and the baby are here—I knocked her husband down before I come because he was drunk and was going to kill her, so we thought we better leave there. That was how we come. But I guess I would have come anyway after I talked with you.
"Your friend,
"Cosma Wakely.""P. S.—I say Cosma all the time now."
I sealed it up and directed it, and slipped it in my book. I wouldn't send it; but it was nice to write it.
The second day I was in the factory, a girl come to me in the hall and asked me if I'd go out with her to lunch. I said I had my roll and a banana; but I'd walk along with her and eat 'em. She said that was what she meant—she had some crackers and an apple. So we walked down the block. Her name was Rose Everly.
There was a place half-way along there where some policemen were always sitting out, and when we went past there one of them spoke to her. She stopped, and she gave me an introduction.
"Miss Wakely," she says, "you meet Sergeant Ebbit."
"Pleased to make your acquaintance," says he. "How's the strike coming on?"
"I don't know as I know anything about any strike," she says, throwing up her head.