re too many waitresses already."
"I understand the work of a waitress, but I never have done general
housework," she answered with the voice of a gentlewoman, which somehow
angered the hawk, who had trained herself to get the advantage over people
and keep it or else know the reason why.
"Very well, do as you please, of course, but you bite your own nose off.
Let me see your references."
The girl was ready for this.
"I am sorry, but I cannot give you any. I have lived only in one home,
where I had entire charge of the table and dining-room, and that home was
broken up when the people went abroad three years ago. I could show you
letters written by the mistress of that home if I had my trunk here, but
it is in another city, and I do not know when I shall be able to send for
it."
"No references!" screamed the hawk, then raising her voice, although it
was utterly unnecessary: "Ladies, here is a girl who has no references. Do
any of you want to venture?" The contemptuous laugh that followed had the
effect of a warning to every woman in the room. "And this girl scorns
general housework, and presumes to dictate for a place as waitress," went
on the hawk.
"I want a waitress badly," said a troubled woman in a subdued whisper,
"but I really wouldn't dare take a girl without references. She might be a
thief, you know, and then--really, she doesn't look as if she was used to
houses like mine. I must have a neat, stylish-looking girl. No
self-respecting waitress nowadays would go out in the street dressed like
that."
All the eyes in the room seemed boring through the poor girl as she stood
trembling, humiliated, her cheeks burning, while horrified tears demanded
to be let up into her eyes. She held her dainty head proudly, and turned
away with dignity.
"However, if you care to try," called out the hawk, "you can register at
the desk and leave two dollars, and if in the meantime you can think of
anybody who'll give us a reference, we'll look it up. But we never
guarantee girls without references."
The tears were too near the surface now for her even to acknowledge this
information flung at her in an unpleasant voice. She went out of the
office, and immediately,--surreptitiously,--two women hurried after her.
One was flabby, large, and overdressed, with a pasty complexion and eyes
like a fish, in which was a lack of all moral sense. She hurried after the
girl and took her by the shoulder just as she reached the
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