demanded 50 cents a week raise in wages, and ice water, and for the
foreman to shave off his mustache. You're too nice a looking girl to
be a scab. Wouldn't you please help us along by trying to find a job
somewhere else, or would you'se rather have your face pushed in?"
"I'll try somewhere else," said Elsie.
She walked aimlessly eastward on Broadway, and there her heart
leaped to see the sign, "Fox & Otter," stretching entirely across
the front of a tall building. It was as though an unseen guide had
led her to it through the by-ways of her fruitless search for work.
She hurried into the store and sent in to Mr. Otter by a clerk her
name and the letter he had written her father. She was shown directly
into his private office.
Mr. Otter arose from his desk as Elsie entered and took both hands
with a hearty smile of welcome. He was a slightly corpulent man of
nearly middle age, a little bald, gold spectacled, polite, well
dressed, radiating.
"Well, well, and so this is Beatty's little daughter! Your father
was one of our most efficient and valued employees. He left nothing?
Well, well. I hope we have not forgotten his faithful services. I
am sure there is a vacancy now among our models. Oh, it is easy
work - nothing easier."
Mr. Otter struck a bell. A long-nosed clerk thrust a portion of
himself inside the door.
"Send Miss Hawkins in," said Mr. Otter. Miss Hawkins came.
"Miss Hawkins," said Mr. Otter, "bring for Miss Beatty to try on one
of those Russian sable coats and - let's see - one of those latest
model black tulle hats with white tips."
Elsie stood before the full-length mirror with pink cheeks and quick
breath. Her eyes shone like faint stars. She was beautiful. Alas!
she was beautiful.
I wish I could stop this story here. Confound it! I will. No; it's
got to run it out. I didn't make it up. I'm just repeating it.
I'd like to throw bouquets at the wise cop, and the lady who rescues
Girls from Jobs, and the prohibitionist who is trying to crush
brandy balls, and the sky pilot who objects to costumes for stage
people (there are others), and all the thousands of good people who
are at work protecting young people from the pitfalls of a great
city; and then wind up by pointing out how they were the means of
Elsie reaching her father's benefactor and her kind friend and
rescuer from poverty. This would make a fine Elsie story of the old
sort. I'd like to do this; but there's just a word or two to follow.
While Elsie was admiring herself in the mirror, Mr. Otter went to
the telephone booth and called up some number. Don't ask me what it
was.
"Oscar," said he, "I want you to reserve the same table for me this
evening. . . . What? Why, the one in the Moorish room to the left
of the shrubbery. . . . Yes; two. . . . Yes, the usual brand; and
the '85 Johannisburger with the roast. If it isn't the right
temperature I'll break your neck. No; not her . . . No,
indeed . . . A new one - a peacherino, Oscar, a peacherino!"
Tired and tiresome reader, I will conclude, if you please, with a
paraphrase of a few words that you will remember were written by
him - by him of Gad's Hill, before whom, if you doff not your hat,
you shall stand with a covered pumpkin - aye, sir, a pumpkin.
Lost, Your Excellency. Lost Associations and Societies. Lost, Right
Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Lost, Reformers and
Lawmakers, born with heavenly compassion in your hearts, but with
the reverence of money in your souls. And lost thus around us every
day.