"You'd better save your money to put in the millinery business
with me," Ida advised. "I can show you how to make a lot.
Sometimes I clear as high as a hundred a week, and I don't
often fall below seventy-five. So many girls go about this
business in a no account way, instead of being regular and
businesslike."
Susan strove to hide the feelings aroused by this practical
statement of what lay before her. Those feelings filled her
with misgiving. Was the lesson still unlearned? Obviously Ida
was right; there must be plan, calculation, a definite line
laid out and held to, or there could not but be failure and
disaster. And yet--Susan's flesh quivered and shrank away.
She struggled against it, but she could not conquer it.
Experience had apparently been in vain; her character had
remained unchanged. . . . She must compel herself. She
must do what she had to do; she must not ruin everything by
imitating the people of the tenements with their fatal habit of
living from day to day only, and taking no thought for the
morrow except fatuously to hope and dream that all would be well.
While she was fighting with herself, Ida had been talking
on--the same subject. When Susan heard again, Ida was saying:
"Now, take me, for instance. I don't smoke or drink. There's
nothing in either one--especially drink. Of course sometimes
a girl's got to drink. A man watches her too close for her to
dodge out.
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