The Story of Julia Page | Page 2

terrifying examinations in ancient history,
geography, and advanced problems in arithmetic. By the time she left

school she was a tall, giggling, black-eyed creature, to be found
walking up and down Mission Street, and gossiping and chewing gum
on almost any sunny afternoon. Between her mother's whining and her
father's bullying, home life was not very pleasant, but at least there was
nothing unusual in the situation; among all the girls that Emeline knew
there was not one who could go back to a clean room, a hospitable
dining-room, a well-cooked and nourishing meal. All her friends did as
she did: wheedled money for new veils and new shoes from their
fathers, helped their mothers reluctantly and scornfully when they must,
slipped away to the street as often as possible, and when they were at
home, added their complaints and protests to the general
unpleasantness.
Had there been anything different before her eyes, who knows what
plans for domestic reform might have taken shape in the girl's plastic
brain? Emeline had never seen one example of real affection and
cooperation between mother and daughters, of work quickly and
skilfully done and forgotten, of a clean bright house and a blossoming
garden; she had never heard a theory otherwise than that she was poor,
her friends were poor, her parents were poor, and that born under the
wheels of a monstrous social injustice, she might just as well be dirty
and discouraged and discontented at once and have done with it, for in
the end she must be so. Why should she question the abiding belief?
Emeline knew that, with her father's good pay and the excellent salaries
earned by her hard-handed, patient-eyed, stupid young brothers, the
family income ran well up toward three hundred dollars a month: her
father worked steadily at five dollars a day, George was a roofer's
assistant and earned eighty dollars a month, and Chester worked in a
plumber's shop, and at eighteen was paid sixty-five dollars. Emeline
could only conclude that three hundred dollars a month was insufficient
to prevent dirt, crowding, scolding, miserable meals, and an incessant
atmosphere of warm soapsuds.
Presently she outraged her father by going into "Delphine's" millinery
store. Delphine was really a stout, bleached woman named Lizzie
Clarke, whose reputation was not quite good, although nobody knew
anything definite against her. She had a double store on Market Street

near Eleventh, a dreary place, with dusty models in the windows, torn
Nottingham curtains draped behind them, and "Delphine" scrawled in
gold across the dusty windows in front. Emeline used to wonder, in the
days when she and her giggling associates passed "Delphine's" window,
who ever bought the dreadful hats in the left-hand window, although
they admitted a certain attraction on the right. Here would be a sign:
"Any Hat in this Window, Two Dollars," surrounded by cheap,
dust-grained felts, gaudily trimmed, or coarse straws wreathed with
cotton flowers. Once or twice Emeline and her friends went in, and one
day when a card in the window informed the passers-by that an
experienced saleslady was wanted, the girl, sick of the situation at
home and longing for novelty, boldly applied for the position. Miss
Clarke engaged her at once.
Emeline met, as she had expected, a storm at home, but she weathered
it, and kept her position. It was hard work, and poorly paid, but the
girl's dreams gilded everything, and she loved the excitement of
making sales, came eagerly to the gossip and joking of her
fellow-workers every morning, and really felt herself to be in the
current of life at last.
Miss Clarke was no better than her reputation, and would have
willingly helped her young saleswoman into a different sort of life. But
Emeline's little streak of shrewd selfishness saved her. Emeline
indulged in a hundred little coarsenesses and indiscretions, but take the
final step toward ruin she would not. Nobody was going to get the
better of her, she boasted. She used rouge and lip red. She "met fellers"
under flaming gas jets, and went to dance halls with them, and to the
Sunday picnics that were her father's especial abomination; she shyly
told vile stories and timidly used strong words, but there it ended.
Perhaps some tattered remnant of the golden dream still hung before
her eyes; perhaps she still clung to the hope of a dim, wonderful time to
come.
More than that, the boys she knew were not a vicious lot; the Jimmies
and Johnnies, the Dans and Eds, were for the most part neighbours, no
more anxious to antagonize Emeline's father than she was. They might

kiss her good-night at her door, they might deliberately try to get the
girls to miss the last train home from the picnic, but their spirit was of
idle mischief