Various - Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885

"Is it an easy position?" she said. She looked down at her feet.

"Is it even a graceful position?" She swung herself to and fro on her revolving-chair.

She looked about her. The office was empty; the office-boy had gone on a very long errand. "I will try it," she said, with determination.

She removed all the books and papers on the right side of the table to the left side. Then she tilted back her chair, elevated her left foot cautiously, put it down, and elevated her right, placed it determinedly on the table, crossed the other foot over it, leaned forward with some difficulty to arrange her skirts, leaned back again.

"My book seems to lie very easily in my lap," she said to herself. "And the leaves turn over quite willingly."

One page, two pages, three pages. "After all," said she,—"after all—if one were quite alone—and had been sitting for a long time in another attitude—"

Tap-tap! came a timid knock at the door.

"Come in!" cried Mrs. Tarbell, resuming her former position in a great hurry, and dropping the law-journal.

Tap-tap!

"Come in!" said Mrs. Tarbell, picking up the law-journal. " Come in !" she said.

And the door opened slowly.

"Well?" said Mrs. Tarbell.

"Is Mrs. Tarbell in?" said the party of the knocks.

"I am Mrs. Tarbell. Come in, please. What can I do for you?"

"I wanted to see you, ma'am."

"Take a chair. Well?"

"I suppose it's April weather," said the new-comer; "but the rain is right chilly, so it is; like it was a November rain, somehow. Will I put my umbreller right down here? The spring is dreadful late, and the farmers is all complainin', they tell me."

Mrs. Tarbell shuddered.

The new-comer was tall and gaunt and thin; her shoulders sloped, she stooped, her chin was up in the air, and she peered through spectacles. Her hat was rusty, her india-rubber gossamer was rusty, the crape on her dress was so very rusty that it seemed to be made of iron-filings. Her cheeks were the color of unburned coffee-grains or of underdone gingerbread; her nose was long; her eyes, were small and bleary; her protruding lips wrinkled up as she spoke, and displayed her poor yellow old tusks; her scant hair was dirty gray, her forehead was bald, her neck was scraggy: she was particularly and pathetically ugly. Her dress bagged about over her long waist and spidery arms. No wonder Mrs. Tarbell shuddered.

"If I ain't disturbing you, Mrs. Tarbell," the visitor continued, "and if you could just spare the time to listen to me for a minnit, I wanted just to ask you for a little advice. My name is Stiles, ma'am,—Mrs. Annette Gorsley Stiles. Gorsley was my given name before I was married—But I feel as if I was taking up your time, Mrs. Tarbell."

"Not at all," said Mrs. Tarbell hastily.

"Well, ma'am, my husband he's dead, been dead this six years now, and left me with four to feed, and—well, I don't know just how to begin, rightly. You see, it's this way. Celandine, my eldest,—that was his name for her; he had a right pretty knack at names, and was always for names that ran easy,—Celandine she's eighteen now, 'n' she wants to be doing something for herself. It drives me real hard to pay for all four of them out of a sewing-machine and the little I make selling candies over a counter,—five cents' worth of chocolate drops and penny's-worths of yellow taffy; never more than fifty cents a day, living where we do, in Pulaski Street,—and Celandine she's bound to help me some way. The next oldest to Celandine is on'y ten; and if I was to starve I wouldn't have him to sell papers or black boots, and his father a foreman; and the' ain't no call for office-boys nowadays, 'r else it's because Augustus is so small for his age—"

"We have an office-boy," murmured Mrs. Tarbell.

"I know, ma'am," said Mrs. Stiles. "Leastways, I guessed as much. I was thinking of asking you about Celandine." Mrs. Tarbell stirred uneasily, and Mrs. Stiles hurried on: "Celandine and me we were talking things over the other day,—we've been reading about you in the newspapers, Mrs. Tarbell, nigh on to four years now; Celandine has always been a comprehending child, precocious, as they say, and quick-witted, and she's been watching your career, ma'am, just as clost as you could yourself. And the day you was admitted she come home,—a friend of hers gave her the afternoon paper,—and she says, 'Mother,' she says, 'Mrs. Tarbell is admitted!'—just like it was a personal friend of yours, Mrs. Tarbell; and reely, ma'am, I suppose I oughtn't to say it, but there's been a good many women all over this country felt themselves personal friends of yours, ma'am, knowing how much there was meant by your success and feeling how near the question come to themselves; and if good wishes brings good luck, that's what you have to thank for succeeding. But Celandine she's an ambitious girl, Mrs, Tarbell, and the long and the short of it is just this, that she's set her heart on being a lawyer, and she's either too shy or too proud, mebbe, to come here with me to speak to you, ma'am: so I just put on my bunnit the first day I could, rain or shine, and rain it's turned out to be, to say a word to you about her and just ask you what you thought ."

"A lawyer?" gasped Mrs. Tarbell.

"Yes, ma'am; a lady lawyer."

Mrs. Tarbell had never a word to say. In spite of having triumphed over all the arguments, both those epicene and those particularly masculine, which had been used against herself, she had not now the strength of mind to use them in her turn. In spite of being a lawyer, she had a conscience. She had looked forward to taking students, but they were all to have been Portias, every woman Jane of them; and before her own learning was fairly dry (which I think an eminently proper adjective to describe legal learning) there appeared to her an obviously crack-brained old party in an india-rubber cloak, who kept a candy-store and wanted her daughter to become a lawyer. No wonder Mrs. Tarbell was embarrassed. Was she to say to the crack-brained one, "Madam, pay me one hundred dollars per annum and I will take your daughter as a student"? On the other hand, how in the name of that Orloff, that Pitt, that Kohinoor diamond among precious virtues, consistency, was she to go so far as even to hint to Mrs. Stiles that any woman couldn't be a lawyer? As Mrs. Tarbell hesitated, she began to fear she was lost.

"Celandine is a real bright girl," said Mrs. Stiles, who had now regained her breath. Was this the woman who had knocked so timidly at the door? "Celandine is a real bright girl; her mind is thorough, logical, and comprehensive,—that's what Professor Jamieson said, up to the High School. Them was his very words. Celandine is to graduate this year: she's in the class with girls two and three years older than herself, Mrs. Tarbell. It was a terrible strain on me to keep her at school, ma'am, and again and again I've thought I couldn't stand it, what with her being in the shop only in the afternoon, and the washing, and trying to keep her clothes always nice; though she's been as good as gold ,—making all her dresses her_self_, and wearing a calico till you'd have thought the stitches would have dropped right out of it. And she's ambitious, as I say. She don't seem to be able to face the idea of going into a store; and, oh, dear me! they're terrible places, those big stores, for girls. They're as bad as the factories; and often and often when I see those poor creatures that stand behind counters all day coming home at night and thinking so much about the way their hair's done, and then consider what slaves they are, and what they're exposed to, and how many wicked people are on the watch to work them to death for no pay at all, and bully them, and to lead them all wrong, if they can, why, it just makes me think how sensible the good Lord is, that he's able to take care of them so well and look after them as much as he does. Professor Jamieson has been as kind as could be about Celandine, and said he'd try to get a place for her as teacher; but you can't do that, you know, Mrs. Tarbell, not onless you've got friends in politics; and I haven't, not one. And a governess ain't often asked for; and you need influence for that, too. And Celandine, though she would take copying or typewriting, or be a telegraph operator, her own idea is to be a lawyer. And I just thought, Mrs. Tarbell, that I'd come to you and ask your advice; for I knew you'd sympathize."