Gerty’s quest, at any rate, brought up against a solid wall of resistance; and even when Carry Fisher, momentarily penitent for her share in the Hatch affair, joined her efforts to Miss Farish’s, they met with no better success. Gerty had tried to veil her failure in tender ambiguities; but Carry, always the soul of candour, put the case squarely to her friend.
“I went straight to Judy Trenor; she has fewer prejudices than the others, and besides she’s always hated Bertha Dorset. But what HAVE you done to her, Lily? At the very first word about giving you a start she flamed out about some money you’d got from Gus; I never knew her so hot before. You know she’ll let him do anything but spend money on his friends: the only reason she’s decent to me now is that she knows I’m not hard up.–He speculated for you, you say? Well, what’s the harm? He had no business to lose. He didn’t lose? Then what on earth–but I never could understand you, Lily!”
The end of it was that, after anxious enquiry and much deliberation, Mrs. Fisher and Gerty, for once oddly united in their effort to help their friend, decided on placing her in the work-room of Mme. Regina’s renowned millinery establishment. Even this arrangement was not effected without considerable negotiation, for Mme. Regina had a strong prejudice against untrained assistance, and was induced to yield only by the fact that she owed the patronage of Mrs. Bry and Mrs. Gormer to Carry Fisher’s influence. She had been willing from the first to employ Lily in the show-room: as a displayer of hats, a fashionable beauty might be a valuable asset. But to this suggestion Miss Bart opposed a negative which Gerty emphatically supported, while Mrs. Fisher, inwardly unconvinced, but resigned to this latest proof of Lily’s unreason, agreed that perhaps in the end it would be more useful that she should learn the trade. To Regina’s work-room Lily was therefore committed by her friends, and there Mrs. Fisher left her with a sigh of relief, while Gerty’s watchfulness continued to hover over her at a distance.
Lily had taken up her work early in January: it was now two months later, and she was still being rebuked for her inability to sew spangles on a hat-frame. As she returned to her work she heard a titter pass down the tables. She knew she was an object of criticism and amusement to the other work-women. They were, of course, aware of her history–the exact situation of every girl in the room was known and freely discussed by all the others–but the knowledge did not produce in them any awkward sense of class distinction: it merely explained why her untutored fingers were still blundering over the rudiments of the trade. Lily had no desire that they should recognize any social difference in her; but she had hoped to be received as their equal, and perhaps before long to show herself their superior by a special deftness of touch, and it was humiliating to find that, after two months of drudgery, she still betrayed her lack of early training. Remote was the day when she might aspire to exercise the talents she felt confident of possessing; only experienced workers were entrusted with the delicate art of shaping and trimming the hat, and the forewoman still held her inexorably to the routine of preparatory work.
She began to rip the spangles from the frame, listening absently to the buzz of talk which rose and fell with the coming and going of Miss Haines’s active figure. The air was closer than usual, because Miss Haines, who had a cold, had not allowed a window to be opened even during the noon recess; and Lily’s head was so heavy with the weight of a sleepless night that the chatter of her companions had the incoherence of a dream.
“I told her he’d never look at her again; and he didn’t. I wouldn’t have, either–I think she acted real mean to him. He took her to the Arion Ball, and had a hack for her both ways…. She’s taken ten bottles, and her headaches don’t seem no better–but she’s written a testimonial to say the first bottle cured her, and she got five dollars and her picture in the paper…. Mrs. Trenor’s hat? The one with the green Paradise? Here, Miss Haines–it’ll be ready right off…. That was one of the Trenor girls here yesterday with Mrs. George Dorset. How’d I know? Why, Madam sent for me to alter the flower in that Virot hat–the blue tulle: she’s tall and slight, with her hair fuzzed out–a good deal like Mamie Leach, on’y thinner….”