How can you wear a waist like that, Lou? said Nancy, gazing down at the offending article with sweet scorn in her heavy-lidded eyes. It shows fierce taste.
This waist? cried Lou, with wide-eyed indignation. Why, I paid $16. for this waist. Its worth twenty-five. A woman left it to be laundered, and never called for it. The boss sold it to me. Its got yards and yards of hand embroidery on it. Better talk about that ugly, plain thing youve got on.
This ugly, plain thing, said Nancy, calmly, was copied from one that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing. The girls say her bill in the store last year was $12,000. I made mine, myself. It cost me $1.50. Ten feet away you couldnt tell it from hers.
Oh, well, said Lou, good-naturedly, if you want to starve and put on airs, go ahead. But Ill take my job and good wages; and after hours give me something as fancy and attractive to wear as I am able to buy.
But just then Dan came a serious young man with a ready-made necktie, who had escaped the citys brand of frivolity an electrician earning 30 dollars per week who looked upon Lou with the sad eyes of Romeo, and thought her embroidered waist a web in which any fly should delight to be caught.
My friend, Mr. Owens shake hands with Miss Danforth, said Lou.
Im mighty glad to know you, Miss Danforth, said Dan, with outstretched hand. Ive heard Lou speak of you so often.
Thanks, said Nancy, touching his fingers with the tips of her cool ones, Ive heard her mention you a few times.
Lou giggled.
Did you get that handshake from Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, Nance? she asked.
If I did, you can feel safe in copying it, said Nancy.
Oh, I couldnt use it, at all. Its too stylish for me. Its intended to set off diamond rings, that high shake is. Wait till I get a few and then Ill try it.
Learn it first, said Nancy wisely, and youll be more likely to get the rings.
Now, to settle this argument, said Dan, with his ready, cheerful smile, let me make a proposition. As I cant take both of you up to Tiffanys[18] and do the right thing, what do you say to a little vaudeville? Ive got the tickets. How about looking at stage diamonds since we cant shake hands with the real sparklers?
The faithful squire took his place close to the curb; Lou next, a little peacocky in her bright and pretty clothes; Nancy on the inside, slender, and soberly clothed as the sparrow, but with the true Van Alstyne Fisher walk thus they set out for their evenings moderate diversion.
I do not suppose that many look upon a great department store as an educational institution. But the one in which Nancy worked was something like that to her. She was surrounded by beautiful things that breathed of taste and refinement. If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or anothers.
The people she served were mostly women whose dress, manners, and position in the social world were quoted as criterions. From them Nancy began to take toll the best from each according to her view.
From one she would copy and practice a gesture, from another an eloquent lifting of an eyebrow, from others, a manner of walking, of carrying a purse, of smiling, of greeting a friend, of addressing inferiors in station. From her best beloved model, Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, she made requisition for that excellent thing, a soft, low voice as clear as silver and as perfect in articulation as the notes of a thrush. Suffused in the aura of this high social refinement and good breeding, it was impossible for her to escape a deeper effect of it. As good habits are said to be better than good principles, so, perhaps, good manners are better than good habits. The teachings of your parents may not keep alive your New England conscience; but if you sit on a straight-back chair and repeat the words prisms and pilgrims forty times the devil will flee from you. And when Nancy spoke in the Van Alstyne Fisher tones she felt the thrill of noblesse oblige[19] to her very bones.
There was another source of learning in the great departmental school. Whenever you see three or four shop-girls gather in a bunch and jingle their wire bracelets as an accompaniment to apparently frivolous conversation, do not think that they are there for the purpose of criticizing the way Ethel does her back hair. The meeting may lack the dignity of the deliberative bodies of man; but it has all the importance of the occasion on which Eve and her first daughter first put their heads together to make Adam understand his proper place in the household. It is Womans Conference for Common Defense and Exchange of Strategical Theories of Attack and Repulse upon and against the World, which is a Stage, and Man, its Audience who Persists in Throwing Bouquets Thereupon. Woman, the most helpless of the young of any animal with the fawns grace but without its fleetness; with the birds beauty but without its power of flight; with the honey-bees burden of sweetness but without its Oh, lets drop that simile some of us may have been stung.
During this council of war they pass weapons one to another, and exchange stratagems that each has devised and formulated out of the tactics of life.