d.i.c.k's landlady was a small woman of about fifty, with blonde hair that was fading in color, and a complexion from which the color, if there had ever been any, had fled. Her eyes no longer looked bright, but her smile was cordial and kindly, and her voice almost caressing as she gave her greeting.

"d.i.c.k tells me that you came to the city this autumn to make your way.

It's a big place, isn't it? Sometimes I feel like I never want to go out in it again. I took this house here so as to be near something green and quiet; but after I got settled, do you know I missed the noise!"

She led Hertha into her parlor, a singularly ugly room, the floor covered with a series of brightly colored, cheap rugs, the walls decorated with colored lithographs that might have been bought by the dozen at some store, so little did they show any individual taste. And not only did every variety of color leap up from the floor and shine down from the walls, but the furniture also was bright, the wood a high varnish in imitation of mahogany, the upholstering in gay green with lines of yellow.

"I like this room," d.i.c.k said emphatically as he seated himself; "it's so jolly. Now there's a picture for every season of the year. The Spring's right over your head, Miss Hertha; apple blossoms and a pretty girl sitting under the tree. And there's Winter in the farther corner with the snow on the ground like we found it that Sunday morning. It's fine to have a lot of stories like this hanging on the wall. And Mrs.

Pickens is better than any story, the way she looks after us. There aren't many here. Only old Mrs. Wood and her daughter and me, and I hope you."

He had chosen the largest chair, crossed his legs, and looked quite at home. Mrs. Pickens, beaming at him from the other side of the room, evidently made much of her one masculine guest. Hertha could see him as he would come back from work at night, loud-voiced, a little domineering, wanting attention, demanding that every one laugh at his least joke. Decidedly, she would not leave Kathleen.

"Won't you show Miss Hertha your vacant room, Mrs. Pickens?" d.i.c.k said as, leaning back in his chair, he stroked the gleaming k.n.o.b at the end of the arm. "If you'd just look at it, please?" he added, changing his tone to one of entreaty as he addressed Hertha.

"I should be glad to," Mrs. Pickens answered. And Hertha, not wishing to be rude, followed the woman upstairs.

When she turned into the vacant room on the second story at the back, she gave a start of surprise. Nothing could have been more unlike the many-hued parlor that she had left. Here was simple furnishing, a white bed and plain white chairs, a soft gray rug, white curtains, no color save in the pretty flowered paper that covered the pictureless wall. A vacant lot in the rear gave an outlook across the next street to the park, where a long line of trees would soon begin to show their first blossoms.

"I don't wonder you're surprised," Mrs. Pickens said, "after the parlor.

Don't imagine that this house is my taste. I rent it from an agent, and am not responsible for anything in it, good or bad. My theory is that the couple who bought the furnishings settled upon a simple method of suiting their diametrically different tastes. One took one half of the house and the other the other, and made a dwelling that's part an installment plan furniture shop and part a hospital. I was sure you would like the hospital, just as I knew our friend d.i.c.k wouldn't. Sit down in this chair, won't you, while I run off a minute to see whether I can do anything for Mrs. Wood. Her daughter is away and I promised I'd look in during the afternoon."

Left to herself Hertha did sit down, and looking out of the window upon the pleasant landscape, tried to make some decision. A moment before she had definitely put aside any thought of staying here; but the lovely room, the cordial greeting, the sense of companionship, made her hesitate. After all, it was nice to have a man to go out with once in a while, and it had been very lonely often at Kathleen's. This was a second turning point in her life. Her legacy was almost untouched since she had drawn upon it to come North, but it would be used lavishly if she decided to devote some months to learning a profession. To enter upon a new career was a great venture, and it might be that it would more easily be carried out if she were in new surroundings, under unfamiliar conditions. Looking out into the street and on to the treetops beyond, or glancing around the pretty room, thinking of Kathleen and her kindness, of d.i.c.k and his devotion, of the perversity of both of them in not understanding that there are many times when one wants not to talk but to sit silent; feeling suddenly a great homesickness for a Sunday afternoon out with Tom, strolling quietly, dreamily, among the pines; uncertain yet expectant, Hertha sat and meditated, letting her thoughts wander, while d.i.c.k crossed and uncrossed his knees in his big chair downstairs.

CHAPTER XXIII

"Well?"

"I said I'd let her know Wednesday."

"Good! You'll say yes, I bet you will. And you'll go to the theater with me Monday."

"No, not Monday."

"Tuesday, then."

"No, I don't want to go this week. Good-by."

"What do you mean?" d.i.c.k looked with amazement at Hertha's outstretched hand. "Think I'm going to bring you here and then leave you to go back alone?"

"I don't need you. I know the way from here and I'd rather go alone."

"Say," said d.i.c.k much perturbed, "what have I done?"

"You haven't done anything, but I want to go back by myself. All I have to do is to change when I'm over the bridge. I'll let you and Mrs.

Pickens know when I decide."

She pushed her fare in at the ticket-window, moved through the turnstile, and without looking around hurried down the platform and boarded the incoming train. d.i.c.k, deciding that this was a time to let a girl have her own way, however foolish it might be, turned back to his home and indulged in delicious thoughts of the future with Hertha each morning opposite him at table and each evening going with him somewhere, it mattered not where, so long as they were together.

What to do? What to do? The b.u.mping cars gave no answer to the riddle.

To go to this new home or to stay in the old one? How could she decide which was best when there were advantages and disadvantages in both? It was a nuisance to weigh and balance. Perhaps the suggestion she had made in talking with Ellen was worth something. She could not go ahead and plan things, but if she waited things would happen. She had not planned the strike but it had relieved her of overtaxing work; she had not thought of moving but d.i.c.k Brown had, and unquestionably he had found an attractive home. Probably he was right, too, regarding the business school. Why not let other people do the planning and fall in with their schemes if they seemed good? If there was anything odious it was having to make changes, but if a change were made for you, you might accept it as the easiest thing to do. And yet she did not want to leave Kathleen.

But Kathleen did not help her case as she and Hertha and William Applebaum sat together at the little dinner that had so disturbed the mind of Richard Brown. It was a usual enough affair, at the French _table d'hote_ that they all three liked, and Madame and her daughters waited on the table and saw to it that the meat and vegetables were upon hot plates and the salad upon cold ones. But this evening, Hertha, tired from her previous night of excitement, without an opportunity to rest after her outing with d.i.c.k, found her Irish friend's propaganda regarding capital and labor wearying and even unkind. Applebaum, appreciating her fatigue, tried to turn the conversation into indifferent channels, but Kathleen would not be moved from her course.

She had learned that the girls were in danger of losing their strike, that the "Imperial" was succeeding in securing reliable non-union help, and she longed to send Hertha out to redeem the situation. Perhaps her confidence in her new friend was excessive, certainly she exaggerated her activity at the walkout, but she knew that a shy, attractive girl, without ambition for position, could sometimes wield a greater influence than the best organizer. Only the shy girl would so seldom use her power.

"A strike," she said, putting down her soup-spoon, "a strike is the one power the lords of the universe, meaning the capitalists, leave us. They can take away fresh air and sunlight, they can rob us of our childhood like they done me when I was a little girl in the country up-state, but they can't make us work. If I stop, and the rest of the workers stop with me, it's starvation for the world until we start to work again."

"Did you live in the country when you were a child?" Hertha asked, interested at once.

"That I did," Kathleen answered.

"Didn't you love it? The sky is so big in the country--you get such miserable smoky patches here--and there are great stretches of earth.

You feel like running with your arms thrown out and singing; and while you're feeling the air and the sky and the big things you look down at your feet and see the little spring flowers."

"Is it like that?" asked Kathleen. "Do you know I hardly remember it."

"Did you leave when you were so young?"

"Eleven."

"But, Kathleen----"

"The sky and air and flowers were dear where I lived, they were only for the rich. For a little girl like me, who slaved in the factory from sun to sun, they were luxuries that came Sundays and holidays and that she was too weary to enjoy."

"At work in the factory at eleven?"

"I worked when I was eight. I remember how my teacher looked when she met me one Sunday and asked why I didn't come to school. I told her my mother had put me to work in the cotton mill. 'It's a sin,' she said and the tears in her eyes. And then she went on to tell how I was her best pupil, and my mother must leave me with her. But that was all come of it, just words. Words from her and the mill for me."

Hertha was silent; but she pictured a little girl, with clear gray eyes and bright hair, holding her thumb tight on her book while she read from its pages, or playing tag at recess; and again, sober, tired-eyed, walking slowly in the twilight back from the factory to her home. "I didn't know such things happened in the North," she said.

"They don't now, thanks to the unions. To-day's children have a better chance than I had. But that's why the sky and flowers aren't so close to my memory as the walls of the spinning-room and the whirring bobbins."

"Do eat your soup, Kathleen," Applebaum said, looking from his empty plate. "It's quite cold."

"Well, if it's cold I won't bother with it. Yes, Miss Marie, you can take it away. And who's that coming in? Major Hayes, I do believe! Come over here and sit with us, Major. It's a long day since you've been here."

An old man, walking slowly but with a soldierly bearing, came to where Kathleen sat. He greeted her quietly, responded silently to her introduction of Applebaum and Hertha, and, taking the fourth place at the table, applied himself a.s.siduously to his dinner. Hertha welcomed his advent as relieving her of Kathleen's labor talk. He sat at her right, and she noted his thin, aristocratic face, his high forehead and long straight nose, his clear blue eyes and soft white hair. She thought him the handsomest old gentleman she had ever seen--a little like old Mr. Merryvale but with more of wisdom and worldliness. There was little talk for a time, only Applebaum occasionally making pleasant if unilluminating remarks on the day's happenings; but with the coming of dessert and coffee Kathleen took command of the conversation and resumed her charge. The Irishwoman, true to her race, was always ready for a fight and could never see when she was beaten.

"We were talking of factories and unions before you came in," she said turning to the Major. "Miss Ogilvie here went out on strike not long since, the 'Imperial' shop. She led the girls out----"

"I did not," Hertha interrupted.

She was angry that Kathleen should represent her as doing anything so aggressive.

"Well, you helped to, I'm proud to say. But I was telling them how I worked in the mill when I was a kid. I was starting on the story of my first strike, and I leading it, when the sight of you put it out of my head."