What could she do to make Miss Quincy feel at ease? The girl certainly
had brains and character. Dick had told them of her brave bearing of
burdens. This stiff back and this silence were but the tribute of
shyness to new surroundings. So ran Mrs. Lenox's swift thoughts and she
set herself to make Lena talk about the things with which she was
familiar, to link her past to this present.
Evidently the same thought was flitting through Madeline's brain, for
before Mrs. Lenox spoke she began: "Do you know, Miss Quincy, I have felt a little envy of you ever since
Dick first told us about you."
"Envy! Of me?" Lena exclaimed, moved to genuine surprise.
"Yes," Madeline went on, leaning forward, eager to explain herself. "You
see, I seem to have had a good deal of training, which looks as though
it should prepare me to do something, and then--then I don't do
anything. It makes me feel flat and unprofitable. I'd like to feel like
you every night--as though I'd really accomplished a thing or two."
"Isn't it like Madeline to try to make the girl feel the dignity of
drudgery!" Mrs. Lenox said to herself.
"The stuck-up thing!" thought Lena; "rubbing it into me that she does
not have to work for her living."
She was tempted to make a sharp answer, but remembered her diplomacy and
held it in.
"Work isn't always so pleasant when you're in it," she said.
"Everything is apt to look rough around the edges until you hold it off
and get a view of it as a whole," Mrs. Lenox put in. "Even
love--sometimes. But I think that, next to love, work is about the best
thing in life."
"Oh, that depends," Madeline cried. "When I read papers at clubs, people
talk about my 'work', but nobody thinks that it is worth while. I'd like
to earn a dollar, just as a guaranty that some one thought the thing I
did was worth it."
"Gracious!" Lena exclaimed in genuine surprise. "Do you really feel that
way about earning money?"
"Don't you?" Madeline asked in return; and each looked at the other
uncomprehendingly.
"No, I don't," Lena burst out sullenly, but forgetting to be shy. "I
feel degraded by every dirty five-dollar bill I get by being a slavey.
People make you feel that way. You get it rubbed into you every day."
"No, no," Mrs Lenox cried, remorseful now that their talk had drifted
into such intimate personalities. "I am sure, Miss Quincy, nobody feels
that way about a woman that works, except, perhaps, people whose
opinion you can well afford to despise." This was a shaft that struck so
near home that Lena could hardly hold back the tears. "I am sure I think
a thousand times more of a woman who does her honest share than I do of
the helpless ones who lie down on somebody else and whine," Mrs. Lenox
went on.