What Diantha Did Part 24

What annoyed the young manager most was the uncertainty and irregularity involved in her work, the facts varying considerably from her calculations.

In the house all ran smoothly. Solemn Mrs. Thorvald did the laundry work for thirty-five--by the aid of her husband and a big mangle for the "flat work." The girls' was.h.i.+ng was limited. "You have to be reasonable about it," Diantha had explained to them. "Your fifty cents covers a dozen pieces--no more. If you want more you have to pay more, just as your employers do for your extra time."

This last often happened. No one on the face of it could ask more than ten hours of the swift, steady work given by the girls at but a fraction over 14 cents an hour. Yet many times the housekeeper was anxious for more labor on special days; and the girls, unaccustomed to the three free hours in the afternoon, were quite willing to furnish it, thus adding somewhat to their cash returns.

They had a dressmaking cla.s.s at the club afternoons, and as Union House boasted a good sewing machine, many of them spent the free hours in enlarging their wardrobes. Some amused themselves with light reading, a few studied, others met and walked outside. The sense of honest leisure grew upon them, with its broadening influence; and among her thirty Diantha found four or five who were able and ambitious, and willing to work heartily for the further development of the business.

Her two housemaids were specially selected. When the girls were out of the house these two maids washed the breakfast dishes with marvelous speed, and then helped Diantha prepare for the lunch. This was a large undertaking, and all three of them, as well as Julianna and Hector worked at it until some six or eight hundred sandwiches were ready, and two or three hundred little cakes.

Diantha had her own lunch, and then sat at the receipt of custom during the lunch hour, making change and ordering fresh supplies as fast as needed.

The two housemaids had a long day, but so arranged that it made but ten hours work, and they had much available time of their own. They had to be at work at 5:30 to set the table for six o'clock breakfast, and then they were at it steadily, with the dining rooms to "do," and the lunch to get ready, until 11:30, when they had an hour to eat and rest. From 12:30 to 4 o'clock they were busy with the lunch cups, the bed-rooms, and setting the table for dinner; but after that they had four hours to themselves, until the nine o'clock supper was over, and once more they washed dishes for half an hour. The caffeteria used only cups and spoons; the sandwiches and cakes were served on paper plates.

In the hand-cart methods of small housekeeping it is impossible to exact the swift precision of such work, but not in the standardized tasks and regular hours of such an establishment as this.

Diantha religiously kept her hour at noon, and tried to keep the three in the afternoon; but the employer and manager cannot take irresponsible rest as can the employee. She felt like a most inexperienced captain on a totally new species of s.h.i.+p, and her paper plans looked very weak sometimes, as bills turned out to be larger than she had allowed for, or her patronage unaccountably dwindled. But if the difficulties were great, the girl's courage was greater. "It is simply a big piece of work," she a.s.sured herself, "and may be a long one, but there never was anything better worth doing. Every new business has difficulties, I mustn't think of them. I must just push and push and push--a little more every day."

And then she would draw on all her powers to reason with, laugh at, and persuade some dissatisfied girl; or, hardest of all, to bring in a new one to fill a vacancy.

She enjoyed the details of her lunch business, and studied it carefully; planning for a restaurant a little later. Her bread was baked in long cylindrical closed pans, and cut by machinery into thin even slices, not a crust wasted; for they were ground into crumbs and used in the cooking.

The filling for her sandwiches was made from fish, flesh, and fowl; from cheese and jelly and fruit and vegetables; and so named or numbered that the general favorites were gradually determined.

Mr. Thaddler chatted with her over the counter, as far as she would allow it, and discoursed more fully with his friends on the verandah.

"p.o.r.ne," he said, "where'd that girl come from anyway? She's a genius, that's what she is; a regular genius."

"She's all that," said Mr. p.o.r.ne, "and a benefactor to humanity thrown in. I wish she'd start her food delivery, though. I'm tired of those two Swedes already. O--come from? Up in Jopalez, Inca County, I believe."

"New England stock I bet," said Mr. Thaddler. "Its a d.a.m.n shame the way the women go on about her."

"Not all of them, surely," protested Mr. p.o.r.ne.

"No, not all of 'em,--but enough of 'em to make mischief, you may be sure. Women are the devil, sometimes."

Mr. p.o.r.ne smiled without answer, and Mr. Thaddler went sulking away--a bag of cakes bulging in his pocket.

The little wooden hotel in Jopalez boasted an extra visitor a few days later. A big red faced man, who strolled about among the tradesmen, tried the barber's shop, loafed in the post office, hired a rig and traversed the length and breadth of the town, and who called on Mrs.

Warden, talking real estate with her most politely in spite of her protestation and the scornful looks of the four daughters; who bought tobacco and matches in the grocery store, and sat on the piazza thereof to smoke, as did other gentlemen of leisure.

Ross Warden occasionally leaned at the door jamb, with folded arms. He never could learn to be easily sociable with ranchmen and teamsters.

Serve them he must, but chat with them he need not. The stout gentleman essayed some conversation, but did not get far. Ross was polite, but far from encouraging, and presently went home to supper, leaving a carrot-haired boy to wait upon his lingering customers.

"Nice young feller enough," said the stout gentleman to himself, "but raised on ramrods. Never got 'em from those women folks of his, either.

He _has_ a row to hoe!" And he departed as he had come.

Mr. Eltwood turned out an unexpectedly useful friend to Diantha. He steered club meetings and "sociables" into her large rooms, and as people found how cheap and easy it was to give parties that way, they continued the habit. He brought his doctor friends to sample the lunch, and they tested the value of Diantha's invalid cookery, and were more than pleased.

Hungry tourists were wholly without prejudice, and prized her lunches for their own sake. They descended upon the caffeteria in chattering swarms, some days, robbing the regular patrons of their food, and sent sudden orders for picnic lunches that broke in upon the routine hours of the place unmercifully.

But of all her patrons, the families of invalids appreciated Diantha's work the most. Where a little shack or tent was all they could afford to live in, or where the tiny cottage was more than filled with the patient, attending relative, and nurse, this depot of supplies was a relief indeed.

A girl could be had for an hour or two; or two girls, together, with amazing speed, could put a small house in dainty order while the sick man lay in his hammock under the pepper trees; and be gone before he was fretting for his bed again. They lived upon her lunches; and from them, and other quarters, rose an increasing demand for regular cooked food.

"Why don't you go into it at once?" urged Mrs. Weatherstone.

"I want to establish the day service first," said Diantha. "It is a pretty big business I find, and I do get tired sometimes. I can't afford to slip up, you know. I mean to take it up next fall, though."

"All right. And look here; see that you begin in first rate shape. I've got some ideas of my own about those food containers."

They discussed the matter more than once, Diantha most reluctant to take any a.s.sistance; Mrs. Weatherstone determined that she should.

"I feel like a big investor already," she said. "I don't think even you realize the _money_ there is in this thing! You are interested in establis.h.i.+ng the working girls, and saving money and time for the housewives. I am interested in making money out of it--honestly! It would be such a triumph!"

"You're very good--" Diantha hesitated.

"I'm not good. I'm most eagerly and selfishly interested. I've taken a new lease of life since knowing you, Diantha Bell! You see my father was a business man, and his father before him--I _like it._ There I was, with lots of money, and not an interest in life! Now?--why, there's no end to this thing, Diantha! It's one of the biggest businesses on earth--if not _the_ biggest!"

"Yes--I know," the girl answered. "But its slow work. I feel the weight of it more than I expected. There's every reason to succeed, but there's the combined sentiment of the whole world to lift--it's as heavy as lead."

"Heavy! Of course it's heavy! The more fun to lift it! You'll do it, Diantha, I know you will, with that steady, relentless push of yours.

But the cooked food is going to be your biggest power, and you must let me start it right. Now you listen to me, and make Mrs. Thaddler eat her words!"

Mrs. Thaddler's words would have proved rather poisonous, if eaten. She grew more antagonistic as the year advanced. Every fault that could be found in the undertaking she pounced upon and enlarged; every doubt that could be cast upon it she heavily piled up; and her opposition grew more rancorous as Mr. Thaddler enlarged in her hearing upon the excellence of Diantha's lunches and the wonders of her management.

"She's picked a bunch o' winners in those girls of hers," he declared to his friends. "They set out in the morning looking like a flock of sweet peas--in their pinks and whites and greens and vi'lets,--and do more work in an hour than the average slavey can do in three, I'm told."

It was a pretty sight to see those girls start out. They had a sort of uniform, as far as a neat gingham dress went, with elbow sleeves, white ruffled, and a Dutch collar; a sort of cross between a nurses dress and that of "La Chocolataire;" but colors were left to taste. Each carried her ap.r.o.n and a cap that covered the hair while cooking and sweeping; but nothing that suggested the black and white livery of the regulation servant.

"This is a new stage of labor," their leader reminded them. "You are not servants--you are employees. You wear a cap as an English carpenter does--or a French cook,--and an ap.r.o.n because your work needs it. It is not a ruffled label,--it's a business necessity. And each one of us must do our best to make this new kind of work valued and respected."

It is no easy matter to overcome prejudices many centuries old, and meet the criticism of women who have nothing to do but criticize. Those who were "mistresses," and wanted "servants,"--someone to do their will at any moment from early morning till late evening,--were not pleased with the new way if they tried it; but the women who had interests of their own to attend to; who merely wanted their homes kept clean, and the food well cooked and served, were pleased. The speed, the accuracy, the economy; the pleasant, quiet, a.s.sured manner of these skilled employees was a very different thing from the old slipshod methods of the ordinary general servant.

So the work slowly prospered, while Diantha began to put in execution the new plan she had been forced into.

While it matured, Mrs. Thaddler matured hers. With steady dropping she had let fall far and wide her suspicions as to the character of Union House.

"It looks pretty queer to me!" she would say, confidentially, "All those girls together, and no person to have any authority over them! Not a married woman in the house but that washerwoman,--and her husband's a fool!"

"And again; You don't see how she does it? Neither do I! The expenses must be tremendous--those girls pay next to nothing,--and all that broth and brown bread flying about town! Pretty queer doings, I think!"

"The men seem to like that caffeteria, don't they?" urged one caller, perhaps not unwilling to nestle Mrs. Thaddler, who flushed darkly as she replied. "Yes, they do. Men usually like that sort of place."

"They like good food at low prices, if that's what you mean," her visitor answered.

"That's not all I mean--by a long way," said Mrs. Thaddler. She said so much, and said it so ingeniously, that a dark rumor arose from nowhere, and grew rapidly. Several families discharged their Union House girls.

Several girls complained that they were insultingly spoken to on the street. Even the lunch patronage began to fall off.