The millinery workroom, winter days, was always bright and warm and snug.The air was a little close, perhaps, and heavy, but with a not unpleasant smell of dyes and stuffs and velvet and glue and steam and flatiron and a certain racy scent that Julia Gold, the head trimmer, always used.There was a sociable cat, white with a dark-gray patch on his throat and a swipe of it across one flank that spoiled him for style and beauty but made him a comfortable-looking cat to have around.Sometimes, on very cold days, or in the rush season, the girls would not go home to dinner, but would bring their lunches and cook coffee over a little gas heater in the corner.Julia Gold, especially, drank quantities of coffee.Aunt Sophy had hired her from Chicago.She had been with her for five years.She said Julia was the best trimmer she had ever had.Aunt Sophy often took her to New York or Chicago on her buying trips.Julia had not much genius for original design, or she never would have been content to be head milliner in a small-town shop.But she could copy a fifty-dollar model from memory down to the last detail of crown and brim.It was a gift that made her invaluable.
The boy, Eugene, used to like to look at Julia Gold.Her hair was very black and her face was very white, and her eyebrows met in a thick dark line.Her face as she bent over her work was sullen and brooding, but when she lifted her head suddenly, in conversation, you were startled by a vivid flash of teeth and eyes and smile.Her voice was deep and low.She made you a little uncomfortable.Her eyes seemed always to be asking something.Around the worktable, mornings, she used to relate the dream she had had the night before.In these dreams she was always being pursued by a lover."And then I woke up, screaming." Neither she nor the sewing girls knew what she was revealing in these confidences of hers.But Aunt Sophy, the shrewd, somehow sensed it.
"You're alone too much, evenings.That's what comes of living in a boardinghouse.You come over to me for a week.The change will do you good, and it'll be nice for me, too, having somebody to keep me company."Julia often came for a week or ten days at a time.Julia, about the house after supper, was given to those vivid splashy negligees with big flower patterns strewn over them.They made her hair look blacker and her skin whiter by contrast.Sometimes Eugene or Adele or both would drop in and the four would play bridge.Aunt Sophy played a shrewd and canny game, Adele a rather brilliant one, Julia a wild and disastrous hand, always, and Eugene so badly that only Julia would take him on as a partner.Mrs.Baldwin never knew about these evenings.
It was on one of these occasions that Aunt Sophy, coming unexpectedly into the living room from the kitchen, where she and Adele were foraging for refreshments after the game, beheld Julia Gold and Eugene, arms clasped about each other, cheek to cheek.They started up as she came in and faced her, the woman defiantly, the boy bravely.Julia Gold was thirty (with reservations) at that time, and the boy not quite twenty-one."How long?" said Aunt Sophy, quietly.She had a mayonnaise spoon and a leaf of lettuce in her hand then, and still she did not look comic.
"I'm crazy about her," said Eugene."We're crazy about each other.We're going to be married."Aunt Sophy listened for the reassuring sound of Adele's spoons and plates in the kitchen.She came forward."Now, listen----" she began.
"I love him," said Julia Gold, dramatically."I love him!"Except that it was very white and, somehow, old-looking, Aunt Sophy's face was as benign as always."Now, look here, Julia, my girl.That isn't love, and you know it.I'm an old maid, but I know what love is when I see it.I'm ashamed of you, Julia.Sensible woman like you, hugging and kissing a boy like that, and old enough to be his mother.""Now, look here, Aunt Sophy! If you're going to talk that way---- Why, she's wonderful.She's taught me what it means to really----""Oh, my land!" Aunt Sophy sat down, looking suddenly very ill.
And then, from the kitchen, Adele's clear young voice:"Heh! What's the idea!I'm not going to do all the work.Where's everybody?" Aunt Sophy started up again.She came up to them and put a hand--a capable, firm, steadying hand--on the arm of each.The woman drew back, but the boy did not.
"Will you promise me not to do anything for a week? Just a week! Will you promise me? Will you?""Are you going to tell Father?"
"Not for a week, if you'll promise not to see each other in that week.No, I don't want to send you away, Julia, I don't want to....You're not a bad girl.It's just--he's never had--at home they never gave him a chance.Just a week, Julia.Just a week, Eugene.We can talk things over then."Adele's footsteps coming from the kitchen."Quick!""I promise," said Eugene.Julia said nothing.
"Well, really," said Adele, from the doorway, "you're a nervy lot, sitting around while I slave in the kitchen.Gene, see if you can open the olives with this fool can opener.I tried."There is no knowing what she expected to do in that week, Aunt Sophy; what miracle she meant to perform.She had no plan in her mind.Just hope.She looked strangely shrunken and old, suddenly.But when, three days later, the news came that America was to go into the war she had her answer.
Flora was beside herself."Eugene won't have to go.He isn't old enough, thank God! And by the time he is it will be over.Surely." She was almost hysterical.
