Catholics -- Fiction; Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Divorce -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction
When her hopes came true and she enlarged her quarters and took a third
assistant and opened a checking account, and alternated Saturdays off
with L. Frankland; when her hopes came true they weren't hopes any
more, but history. For anyone with the gambler's instinct, and Georgia
had more than a little of it, yesterday is a dull affair compared with
to-morrow.
It gives one a mighty respectable feeling to have the receiving teller
smile and say, "What--you--again?" when you come to his window. Then
he writes a new total in your book in purple ink and you peek at it
once or twice on your way back to the office.
Yes, success was very sweet and creditable. It did away with a heap of
worry around the first of the month; any woman is happier for not
having to make last year's suit do; and people are certainly more
polite. Money's the oil of life. But it isn't life.
If you're only thirty, and the dollar's all you want, or get--Georgia
leaned back in her pivot chair and stretched her arms above her head
and yawned, ho-ho-hum, the stodgy man will get you if you don't watch
out.
"Frank," she asked, "do you ever feel like an automaton that's been
wound up and has to keep going till it runs down!"
"Sure. Everybody does, now and then."
"But what's the use? what's the answer?" continued Georgia querulously.
L. Frankland looked over her spectacles and her shoulder, her hands
still on the keyboard. "The answer," she said vivaciously, "for a
woman is a man; for a man the answer is a woman. Whoever made us knew
what he was about, and don't you forget it. What's your idea?"
"Let's hear yours out first."
"Once when I was a young thing," said L. Frankland, swinging around, "I
waited for an hour in my wedding dress, but--he never came. He was
killed on the way to the church by a runaway horse. I decided to
remain true to his memory. I had other chances afterwards, when I was
still a young thing," she smiled whimsically, "but I refused them. I'm
sorry now."
"Frank, you remember my telling you about that money I owed to the man
I--spoke about?"
"Yes."
"And how it worried me?"
"Yes."
"Well, I paid it off last week, and I've been miserable ever since."
"That's because you felt you were snapping the last thread. Is he
still in love with you?"
"No. At least I don't see how he could be. It's been so long, and the
last time he saw me," Georgia laughed unhappily, "I wasn't very lovely."
"If he saw you now, young lady, he'd have nothing to complain of," was
the cheerful retort. "By the way, has he sent you a receipt for the
money?"
"No, not yet."
"The best sign in the world," said L. Frankland, slapping her knee
excitedly.
"Why?"
"Because it shows he's thinking about it. It's not routine to him.
Georgia, if you have another chance given you, don't be afraid to take
life in your own hands," the old maid said gently, "if you know that
you love him."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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