Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
What did you do next? You begged from people on the street. Jennie
selected a middle-aged, prosperous, motherly looking woman. She framed
her plea with stiff lips. Before she had finished her sentence she found
herself addressing empty air. The middle-aged, prosperous, motherly
looking woman had hurried on.
Well, then you tried a man. You had to be careful there. He mustn't be
the wrong kind. There were so many wrong kinds. Just an ordinary
looking family man would be best. Ordinary looking family men are
strangely in the minority. There are so many more bull-necked, tan-shoed
ones. Finally Jennie's eye, grown sharp with want, saw one. Not too
well dressed, kind-faced, middle-aged.
She fell into step beside him.
"Please, can you help me out with a shilling?"
Jennie's nose was red, and her eyes watery. Said the middle-aged family
man with the kindly face:
"Beat it. You've had about enough I guess."
Jennie walked into a department store, picked out the oldest and most
stationary looking floorwalker, and put it to him. The floorwalker bent
his head, caught the word "food," swung about, and pointed over Jennie's
head.
"Grocery department on the seventh floor. Take one of those elevators
up."
Any one but a floorwalker could have seen the misery in Jennie's face.
But to floorwalkers all women's faces are horrible.
Jennie turned and walked blindly toward the elevators. There was no
fight left in her. If the floorwalker had said, "Silk negligees on the
fourth floor. Take one of those elevators up," Jennie would have ridden
up to the fourth floor, and stupidly gazed at pink silk and val lace
negligees in glass cases.
Tell me, have you ever visited the grocery department of a great store on
the wrong side of State Street? It's a mouth-watering experience. A
department store grocery is a glorified mixture of delicatessen shop,
meat market, and vaudeville. Starting with the live lobsters and crabs
you work your hungry way right around past the cheeses, and the sausages,
and the hams, and tongues, and head-cheese, past the blonde person in
white who makes marvelous and uneatable things out of gelatine, through a
thousand smells and scents--smells of things smoked, and pickled, and
spiced, and baked and preserved, and roasted.
Jennie stepped out of the elevator, licking her lips. She sniffed the
air, eagerly, as a hound sniffs the scent. She shut her eyes when she
passed the sugar-cured hams. A woman was buying a slice from one, and
the butcher was extolling its merits. Jennie caught the words "juicy"
and "corn-fed."
That particular store prides itself on its cheese department. It boasts
that there one can get anything in cheese from the simple cottage variety
to imposing mottled Stilton. There are cheeses from France, cheeses from
Switzerland, cheeses from Holland. Brick and parmesan, Edam and
limburger perfumed the atmosphere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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