effect has been produced, and expects to find indications of surprise and
admiration.
“This is my daughter Hattie–we call her Puss. It’s the new boarder,
Puss.” This without rising.
The young Englishman made the awkward bow common to his nationality and
time of life in circumstances of delicacy and difficulty, and these were
of that sort; for, being taken by surprise, his natural, lifelong self
sprang to the front, and that self of course would not know just how to
act when introduced to a chambermaid, or to the heiress of a mechanics’
boarding house. His other self–the self which recognized the equality
of all men–would have managed the thing better, if it hadn’t been caught
off guard and robbed of its chance. The young girl paid no attention to
the bow, but put out her hand frankly and gave the stranger a friendly
shake and said:
“How do you do?”
Then she marched to the one washstand in the room, tilted her head this
way and that before the wreck of a cheap mirror that hung above it,
dampened her fingers with her tongue, perfected the circle of a little
lock of hair that was pasted against her forehead, then began to busy
herself with the slops.
“Well, I must be going–it’s getting towards supper time. Make yourself
at home, Mr. Tracy, you’ll hear the bell when it’s ready.”
The landlady took her tranquil departure, without commanding either of
the young people to vacate the room. The young man wondered a little
that a mother who seemed so honest and respectable should be so
thoughtless, and was reaching for his hat, intending to disembarrass the
girl of his presence; but she said:
“Where are you going?”
“Well–nowhere in particular, but as I am only in the way here–”
“Why, who said you were in the way? Sit down–I’ll move you when you are
in the way.”
She was making the beds, now. He sat down and watched her deft and
diligent performance.
“What gave you that notion? Do you reckon I need a whole room just to
make up a bed or two in?”
“Well no, it wasn’t that, exactly. We are away up here in an empty
house, and your mother being gone–”
The girl interrupted him with an amused laugh, and said:
“Nobody to protect me? Bless you, I don’t need it. I’m not afraid.
I might be if I was alone, because I do hate ghosts, and I don’t deny it.
Not that I believe in them, for I don’t. I’m only just afraid of them.”
“How can you be afraid of them if you don’t believe in them?”
“Oh, I don’t know the how of it–that’s too many for me; I only know it’s
so. It’s the same with Maggie Lee.”
“Who is that?”
“One of the boarders; young lady that works in the factry.”
“She works in a factory?”
“Yes. Shoe factory.”
“In a shoe factory; and you call her a young lady?”
“Why, she’s only twenty-two; what should you call her?”
“I wasn’t thinking of her age, I was thinking of the title. The fact is,
I came away from England to get away from artificial forms–for
artificial forms suit artificial people only–and here you’ve got them
too. I’m sorry. I hoped you had only men and women; everybody equal;
no differences in rank.”
The girl stopped with a pillow in her teeth and the case spread open
below it, contemplating him from under her brows with a slightly puzzled
expression. She released the pillow and said:
“Why, they are all equal. Where’s any difference in rank?”
“If you call a factory girl a young lady, what do you call the
President’s wife?”
“Call her an old one.”
“Oh, you make age the only distinction?”
“There ain’t any other to make as far as I can see.”
“Then all women are ladies?”
“Certainly they are. All the respectable ones.”
“Well, that puts a better face on it. Certainly there is no harm in a
title when it is given to everybody. It is only an offense and a wrong
when it is restricted to a favored few. But Miss–er–”
“Hattie.”
“Miss Hattie, be frank; confess that that title isn’t accorded by