“ ‘But that’s why I’m telling you, Irene. What else can I do?’
“ ‘Ah’ll tell yuh what else you can do. You can—’ Then she stops a minute and says in a lower voice, ‘That maid o’ yours likely to be eavesdroppin’—?’
“So of course then I had to catch air. Certainly wish I knew what she told her to do.”
The oppression of Mrs. Fuller’s compulsory silence together with the emotions excited by what she had heard by this time had her in the throes of dyspnea. She panted and gasped while Linda paused to look on with curiosity and some alarm. The girl’s apprehension cost her the floor.
“Know what you ought to do?” Mrs. Fuller managed to get in; to which there was but one thing to say:
“What?”
“You ought to refuse to stay in that woman’s house another minute. You ought to up and leave.”
“And go where?”
“Ain’t you got—” Mrs. Fuller stopped short, struck with a notion. The notion flowered into an idea. She grinned a half-moon grin, scalloped with tiny lesser half-moons, drew breath prodigiously, and delivered herself:
“Chile, I’m go’n’ need a maid right hyeh. I done told Mr. Merrit already, and he say soon’s he come in town it’d be all right. Y’see we been livin’ in a ’partment all along and ’twasn’t but six rooms and I could take care of everything with a little day help, but now with all this house it’s go’n’ be too much for one pair of hands to tend too much fo’ me and I don’ feel none too good nohow so Mr. Merrit say it’ll be fine and to get a good girl and make sho’ she ain’t too ugly ’cause he didn’ want his stomach turned, and bless my soul if I ain’t forgot all about it till this very minute. Now if you ain’ got no objection to workin’ fo’ y’own people, he’s a fine man to work fo’ and’ll never give you no trouble—least, not about yo’ work. ’Cose you kinda pretty fo’ a maid, but I reckon you can take good care o’ yo’se’f, and anyhow he’s a gen’leman. So hyeh’s a job ready and waitin’ fo’ you if you want it.”
“How much?” said Linda. “I’m getting eighteen—that’s pretty good, you know.”
“Shuh, chile, he’d give you twenty—jes’ to be givin’ you mo’n you been gettin’. He pays me twenty-five—and says it’s a heap cheaper’n marryin’, but I jes’ tells ’im he needn’ hint at me like that ’cause they’s some things he couldn’ pay me to do—”
“Twenty dollars!”
“Sho, chile. All I got to do is tell ’im—”
Linda jumped up. “You mean it?”
“Mean ev’ry word of it and you’d have lots mo’ time to yo’se’f, too.”
“Honest? Do you think—” An old ambition raised its head—“Do you think maybe I could go to night school sometimes and learn to run a typewriter?”
This time Mrs. Fuller stopped breathing altogether. “Do which?”
“I don’t want to be a K.M. all my life.”
“Aimin’ to better yo’se’f, huh?”
Linda was afraid she had made the wrong move here, but it was too late to change. She nodded with exaggerated vigor.
“Glory be!” was Mrs. Fuller’s surprising comment. “Glad to see it, chile, glad to see it. Does me good to see one our young girls what wants to better herse’f. Our girls ain’t got no ambition, no ambition ’tall, ’ceptin’ to go on the stage or dance in a cabaret or some such thing as that.”
There followed a lengthy dissertation on the laziness of “our” girls, to which Linda listened, eagerly impatient. Finally Mrs. Fuller perorated with:
“Deed, chile, that’s fine and I’m glad to see it and I’ll help you all I can—you can get off mos’ every night—and I bet Mr. Fred’ll give you all the encouragement in the world—and maybe one them typewritin’ things to boot. Well, want to try it? You can start soon’s he get back. How ’bout it?”
“How ’bout it?” Linda exulted. “How ’bout it?—Oh boy!”
XVI
While he couldn’t compare it with the Lafayette Theater of course, still Joshua Jones considered it a pretty good show. At least it would have been if the dumbbells hadn’t jumped up and down so often.
It began with music, a chorus singing far away behind the audience—outside the church, it seemed. The singing came nearer and entered at the rear, and Shine obeyed the impulse to turn and look; but before he could determine what the trick in it was, Linda pinched his arm sharply and brought him about, puzzled and resentful, to see her shaking her bowed head with ill-concealed vigor. Thereupon he noticed that everyone else stood like Linda, motionless, with lowered head, as if it wasn’t proper to look; and he wondered what manner of performance this was, which one might attend, but on which one might not gaze.
Into his surreptitious sidewise vision first came two kids carrying enormous lighted candles. The kids wore black bordered white robes and seemed to have an awfully hard time waiting for the rest of the procession to catch up. Then came the leading man, distinguished by his sedate bearing and singular position, also in a flowing white robe; Shine saw the lean face with its sharp profile and pallid skin and concluded that this guy didn’t much enjoy his job.
There passed, following the leading man, a countless succession of increasingly taller couples, all in robes, all singing lustily without ever once consulting the books they carried before them: not much of a chorus, since the costumes made it almost impossible to distinguish the chorines from the chorats. Good singing though, funny, slow, no pep, but something about it—
Eventually they all found their places up front. There followed fifteen minutes of many and mysterious diversions: The two kids playing a game with the candles—lighting a lot more candles arched over the stage, seeing who could light the most. That ended in a draw. The leading man singing a
