Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
Her quavering voice recited the verses, while Felicia whistled, oh, so
softly!
They fluttered after her as she walked down the corridor, the Matron
walked beside her and the Wheezy's arm was through hers. Of course she
was coming again, she promised them she would, they accepted her
promises with eager queries like children.
"I'll come another visiting day--" she patted the Wheezy's shoulders,
"I like to! You all are _so_ good at pretending!"
"Do you know," she told Judge Harlow in the morning, "I did find some
one who knows who I am?" Her face was glowing with achievement,
"Even if you get so old that you don't look at all as you used to
there's some part of you that people can't forget. Some Happy Part of
you! You really ought to try it! Perhaps there is some old lady up
there who used to know you when you were little! If you'd go there
some visiting day and whistle for her she'd know you, just as quick!
You try it!"
She went away thrilling with anticipation. He had a young lawyer
there, who had a great many papers. The young lawyer explained to her
that the Justice had asked him to keep track of things for her. And
they were arranging it so that in another week, she would possess her
house, mortgages, taxes, fines and all, and the thirty days "to
straighten things" but she would actually possess it and the tailor
and the tailor's missus and all their dreadful tenants would have to
go out, bag and baggage.
She trotted into The Woman's Exchange at noon, positively buoyant.
"You'll have to find me another by-the-day," she announced to Miss
Sarah.
"How'd you make out Saturday?"
"I--made--_out_--" Felicia laughed back at her. "She was a WEED, that
woman. The old man played chess with me but she didn't like us to do it.
I couldn't take the two dollars--"
"I'm afraid you aren't businesslike," Miss Sarah chided, "you said you
needed the money."
"I do," Felicia assured her, "that's why I'm back for another by-the-
day."
Miss Sarah found another job for her, indeed she jotted down several
possible places in a small notebook whose florid cover extolled the
virtues of Dinkle's Cough Syrup.
"This would be a good book for anybody so unbusinesslike as you," she
confided as she presented her client with it. "In the back here are
pages to write what you earn and what you spend and to keep track of
the days you are going out."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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