A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago StrikeKing, Charles
General
A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike
King, Charles
Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Pullman Strike, 1894 -- Fiction; Strikes and lockouts -- Fiction
washing dishes, or making clothes for her mother and herself, and
patiently, pluckily, cheerily looked forward to the time when Mart could
help. Mart spent six months "hunting for something to suit," and found
nothing he liked so much as making love to his pretty, penniless
neighbor. The clerkships he was offered didn't pay twenty dollars a
week, which was the least he thought a man of his ability and education
should accept. Jeannette told him the proper way was to take ten if he
could get it, and work his way up; but Mart disapproved of women's
interference in his affairs. It ended in his finally getting a
bottom-of-the-list berth in the freight depot of a big railway, and a
wife forthwith. Jeannette said nothing. She had taken Mart's measure and
saw this coming. "If I do not soon have to take care of Mart's wife and
babies, I'll be in luck," was the thought that possibly occurred to
her; but she was a silent little body, much given to shrewd and
common-sense observation of the world in which she lived. She was a
sunny-natured, merry-hearted child in the old days, and even as she grew
older and more burdened with care the little home still echoed to the
sound of her blithe song as she flitted from room to room about her
work, ever brave, hopeful, uncomplaining. "If I only had Jenny's
spirits," said the widow to her one lodger, "I might do something, too,"
but, as she hadn't Jenny's spirits or disposition, by a good deal, the
bereaved lady thought it unnecessary to try. It was Jenny who bore the
burden of every detail, Jenny who did their humble marketing, Jenny who
made the hard bargains with landlord and coal-merchant, Jenny who taught
and supervised the one clumsy damsel who was brought in as cook,
scullion, laundress, and maid-of-all-work, and Jenny who, after all, did
more than she taught. It was Jenny who cut and fashioned almost every
garment worn by either her mother or herself, who made and trimmed the
modest little hats or bonnets, who watched the bargain-counters at the
great retail shops and wished that women didn't have to wear gloves and
buttoned boots; Jenny who had to follow up their flitting
lodgers,--young men who folded their tents like the Arabs they were, and
as silently stole away out of the house, leaving sometimes a big
lodging-bill and little luggage; Jenny who presently had to nurse Mart's
wife and baby, just as she expected, for Mart lost that job, and the
house he had rented, and the furniture he hadn't paid for and that was
seized just when most needed. So baby Number One first saw the light
under the roof that Jenny's hard work paid for,--a lodger having
opportunely "skipped." And all the while she managed to keep up her
study and practice, and to do little odd jobs in copying, sitting far
into the dawn sometimes with aching arms and wrists and burning eyes and
whirling brain. There was no yielding to "beauty sleep" for poor Jenny.
Dark circles often settled underneath the brave, steadfast eyes, and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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