She was glad afterwards she had put up with the lack of privacy and the other inconveniences of the public ward. Mr. Manning had arranged for her to stay with a friend of theirs in New Jersey and there Mimi was so contented, so happy, in the little cottage near Camden, she wished she could have remained there always. She loved to give Jean his bath, to feed him, to shower on him little attentions and superfluous affections. His clutching hands dug into her flesh as he nursed and the exquisite pain of it sent deliriously exhilarating tingles throughout her body. And she talked to him as though he were old enough to understand, whenever she was certain no one could overhear her.
“You’re mine, baby Jean, all mine. … No other person owns any part of you. … I’ll work for you, sacrifice everything for you … and we’ll be happy, so happy, together. … You’ll never know the agony your mother went through. … I’ll give everything gladly to save you and keep you free. …”
All too soon she was forced to return to Philadelphia. Up to this time Mimi had refused to permit herself to worry over the problem of earning a living for herself and little Jean. She told the Mannings frankly of her financial condition. They so readily showed their willingness to help her, it brought tears of gratitude that could not be checked. Her regular hours during the long months when she was awaiting Jean’s arrival, the willingness she had always shown to help with any task around the house, her regular church attendance, had all combined to endear her to the elderly couple who had no children of their own.
“Don’t you worry one little bit, honey,” Mrs. Manning told her. “You’ll never have to worry about rent or food—so long’s we’ve got anything to eat and a roof over our heads you’ve them too.”
They sat in the dining-room until long after midnight the evening Mimi returned from the country, devising ways and means of Mimi’s earning in some way enough to supply the needs of herself and “Petit Jean,” as she called the baby, to differentiate him from the Jean who had gone. Mr. Manning scratched his white head and pursed his lips as he gazed at the ceiling.
“You say you haven’t been taught a trade—you’re too good for housework—hm—let me see—let me see‑e‑e,” he spoke half to himself, half to the two women. Mimi volunteered the information that she could sew rather well. “You can? Why’n’t you tell me that before? Why, that settles it all! I’ll speak to some of my customers and get you plenty of work doing sewing by the day.” A smile, beautiful in its radiant joy at solution of the vexing problem, wreathed his face.
“But what about the baby?” his wife inquired. Mr. Manning’s face fell, wiped as clean of its elation as a blackboard when a damp cloth is passed over it. “I’ll tell you what we can do,” Mrs. Manning went on. “Days when I’m away we can put him in a day nursery.”
Mimi was not allowed to begin her new life for some time, however. On one pretext after another her day of beginning work was deferred by the Mannings. The most frequent excuse was that most of the people who needed the services of a seamstress had gone away for the summer. Though Mimi had now been in Philadelphia more than eight months she knew little of the city. Her life before the baby was born had been so limited a one she had seldom been farther from home than a few blocks. The hugeness of the city, its teeming streets, the roar of traffic, the hurrying throngs, each person in it set on his own affairs to the exclusion of everything and everybody else, frightened her. When she ventured out alone she always had the feeling as though some huge hand had picked her up and thrown her into a raging torrent. And always she regained the haven of home with a prayer of thanksgiving in her heart that she had not been killed in the bustle by one of the wagons or trucks that rushed down upon one with such terrifying speed. Used to the somnolence of New Orleans and the lesser traffic of Atlanta, she often wondered why she had ever chosen Philadelphia as her city of refuge—“City of Brotherly Love” was certainly an anachronism to a stranger like herself.
She was happy with the Mannings but her inaction worried her. Except for a few dollars she was now completely without funds. She had had to buy a number of things for the baby but even though she had made most of his clothes herself, cloth and thread and buttons cost. She did not tell the Mannings of her worries, for they invariably sought to dismiss them from her mind. But she had overheard snatches of their conversation when they did not know she was near—in the small house a secret conversation was most difficult—and she had noticed little economies they practised, and not because of parsimony. The two were getting old, there were fewer and fewer calls every year now for their services. Younger and more progressive people were gobbling the bulk of the catering jobs. Their older customers
