Page:The American Magazine volume LXIV.djvu/33

The ladies of the Every Monday Euchre Club, lingering over their salad and coffee at the close of an afternoon, habitually lamented the scarcity of servants in Gardner, ascribing as the cause that Gardner was a mill town. Mrs. Bascome, lately come from the South, and secure in her colored Becky, lightly imputed the whole trouble to the fact that the North was so insistent upon education. The final word seemed to have been said when she drawled conclusively:

"Ma fathah always said if the working people were educated, it would be the end of the servant class."

As she spoke, she flung her stole over one shoulder in the fashion of the year, joined several of the other club members, and departed in a flutter of gay talk down the street's steep descent toward the car. The trolley at this hour was crowded to the very steps with the mill hands, and the club women were obliged to swing unsteadily from straps, holding their finery from the floor in indignant protest. Their indignation was only partially appeased when several men sheepishly abandoned their seats to them, and made their way to the platform and the solace of tobacco. Most of the mill girls were brave in their early winter finery, patterned in close imitation of the custom-made garments of the Euchre Club. Some of them stared rudely at Mrs. Bascome's smart little hat that flared at an unexpected angle, then adjusted their stiff felts, gay with ribbons and scanty plumes, in a vain attempt at her style. Here and there women drooped with fatigue. Their hands, in