She was awakened by Ida, who had entered after knocking and calling at the outer door in vain.Susan slowly opened her eyes, gazed at Ida with a soft dreamy smile."You don't know what this means.It seems to me I was never quite so comfortable or so happy in my life.""It's a shame to disturb you," said Ida."But dinner's ready.
Don't stop to dress first.I'll bring you a kimono."Susan turned on the cold water, and the bath rapidly changed from warm to icy.When she had indulged in the sense of cold as delightful in its way as the sense of warmth, she rubbed her glowing skin with a rough towel until she was rose-red from head to foot.Then she put on stockings, shoes and the pink kimono Ida had brought, and ran along the hall to dinner.As she entered Ida's room, Ida exclaimed, "How sweet and pretty you do look! You sure ought to make a hit!""I feel like a human being for the first time in--it seems years--ages--to me.""You've got a swell color--except your lips.Have they always been pale like that?""No."
"I thought not.It don't seem to fit in with your style.You ought to touch 'em up.You look too serious and innocent, anyhow.They make a rouge now that'll stick through everything--eating, drinking--anything."Susan regarded herself critically in the glass."I'll see,"she said.
The odor of the cooking chops thrilled Susan like music.She drew a chair up to the table, sat in happy-go-lucky fashion, and attacked the chop, the hot biscuit, and the peas, with an enthusiasm that inspired Ida to imitation."You know how to cook a chop," she said to Ida."And anybody who can cook a chop right can cook.Cooking's like playing the piano.If you can do the simple things perfectly, you're ready to do anything.""Wait till I have a flat of my own," said Ida."I'll show you what eating means.And I'll have it, too, before very long.
Maybe we'll live together.I was to a fortune teller's yesterday.That's the only way I waste money.I go to fortune tellers nearly every day.But then all the girls do.You get your money's worth in excitement and hope, whether there's anything in it or not.Well, the fortune teller she said I was to meet a dark, slender person who was to change the whole course of my life--that all my troubles would roll away--and that if any more came, they'd roll away, too.My, but she did give me a swell fortune, and only fifty cents! I'll take you to her."Ida made black coffee and the two girls, profoundly contented, drank it and talked with that buoyant cheerfulness which bubbles up in youth on the slightest pretext.In this case the pretext was anything but slight, for both girls had health as well as youth, had that freedom from harassing responsibility which is the chief charm of every form of unconventional life.
And Susan was still in the first flush of the joy of escape from the noisome prison whose poisons had been corroding her, soul and body.No, poison is not a just comparison; what poison in civilization parallels, or even approaches, in squalor, in vileness of food and air, in wretchedness of shelter and clothing, the tenement life that is really the typical life of the city? From time to time Susan, suffused with the happiness that is too deep for laughter, too deep for tears even, gazed round like a dreamer at those cheerful comfortable surroundings and drew a long breath--stealthily, as if she feared she would awaken and be again in South Fifth Avenue, of rags and filth, of hideous toil without hope.
"You'd better save your money to put in the millinery business with me," Ida advised."I can show you how to make a lot.
Sometimes I clear as high as a hundred a week, and I don't often fall below seventy-five.So many girls go about this business in a no account way, instead of being regular and businesslike."Susan strove to hide the feelings aroused by this practical statement of what lay before her.Those feelings filled her with misgiving.Was the lesson still unlearned? Obviously Ida was right; there must be plan, calculation, a definite line laid out and held to, or there could not but be failure and disaster.And yet--Susan's flesh quivered and shrank away.
She struggled against it, but she could not conquer it.
Experience had apparently been in vain; her character had remained unchanged....She must compel herself.She must do what she had to do; she must not ruin everything by imitating the people of the tenements with their fatal habit of living from day to day only, and taking no thought for the morrow except fatuously to hope and dream that all would be well.
While she was fighting with herself, Ida had been talking on--the same subject.When Susan heard again, Ida was saying:
"Now, take me, for instance.I don't smoke or drink.There's nothing in either one--especially drink.Of course sometimes a girl's got to drink.A man watches her too close for her to dodge out.But usually you can make him think you're as full as he is, when you really are cold sober.""Do the men always drink when they--come with--with--us?" asked Susan.
"Most always.They come because they want to turn themselves loose.That's why a girl's got to be careful not to make a man feel nervous or shy.A respectable woman's game is to be modest and innocent.With us, the opposite.They're both games; one's just as good as the other.""I don't think I could get along at all--at this," confessed Susan with an effort, "unless I drank too much--so that I was reckless and didn't care what happened."Ida looked directly into her eyes; Susan's glance fell and a flush mounted.After a pause Ida went on: