Chapter 14: Idleness

When one has a famishing thirst for happiness, one is apt to gulp down diversions wherever they are offered. The necessity of draining the dregs of life before the wine is savored does not cultivate a discriminating taste. Nance saw in Birdie Smelts her one chance of escape from the deadly monotony of life, and she seized it with both hands. Birdie might not be approved of her seniors, but she was a disturbingly important person to her juniors. To them it seemed nothing short of genius for a girl, born as they were in the sordid environs of Calvary Alley, to side-step school and factory and soar away into the paradise of stage-land. When such an authority gives counsel, it is not to be ignored. Birdie’s advice had been to quit the factory, and Nance had taken the plunge without any idea of what she was going to put in its place.

For some reason best known to herself, she never mentioned that episode in the factory yard to either Birdie or Dan Lewis. There were many things about Birdie that she did not like, and she knew only too well what Miss Stanley would have said. But then Miss Stanley wouldn’t have approved of Mr. Demry and his dope, or Mrs. Snawdor and her beer, or Mag Gist, with her loud voice and coarse jokes. When one lives in Calvary Alley, one has to compromise; it is seldom the best or the next best one can afford, even in friends.

When Mrs. Snawdor heard that Nance had quit work, she was furious. Who was Nance Molloy, she wanted to know, to go and stick up her nose at a glass factory? There wasn’t a bloomin’ thing the matter with Clarke’s. She’d begun in a factory an’ look at her! What was Nance a-goin’ to do? Run the streets with Birdie Smelts? It was bad enough, God knew, to have Snawdor settin’ around like a tombstone, an’ Fidy a-havin’ a fit if you so much as looked at her, without havin’ Nance eatin’ ‘em out of house an’ home an’ not bringin’ in a copper cent. If she stayed at home, she’d have to do the work; that was all there was to it!

“Anybody’d think jobs happened around as regerlar as the rent man,” she ended bitterly. “You’ll see the day when you’re glad enough to go back to the factory.”

Before the month was over, Nance began to wonder if Mrs. Snawdor was right. With unabating zeal she tramped the streets, answering advertisements, applying at stores, visiting agencies. But despite the fact that she unblushingly recommended herself in the highest terms, nobody seemed to trust so young and inexperienced an applicant.

Meanwhile Birdie Smelts’s thrilling prospect of joining her company at an early date threw other people’s sordid possibilities into the shade. Every night she practised gymnastics and dance steps, and there being no room in the Smelts’ flat, she got into the habit of coming up to Nance’s room.

One of the conditions upon which Nance had been permitted to return to
Calvary Alley, was that she should not sleep in the same bed with Fidy
Yager, a condition which enraged Mrs. Snawdor more than all the rest.
“Annybody’d think Fidy’s fits was ketchin’,” she complained indignantly to Uncle Jed.

“That there front room of mine ain’t doin’ anybody no good,” suggested
Uncle Jed. “We might let Nance have that.”
So to Nance’s great joy she was given a big room all to herself. The slat bed, the iron wash-stand, the broken-legged chair, and the wavy mirror were the only articles that Mrs. Snawdor was willing to part with, but Uncle Jed donated a battered stove, which despite its rust-eaten top and sagging door, still proclaimed itself a “Little Jewel”.