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A Passport To Paradise
by
And Yetta was too disturbed by the danger so narrowly escaped to tell this charming but most strangely ignorant young person that the washing of a face was a most time-consuming process. Yetta’s one-roomed home was on the top floor, the sixth, and the only water supply was in the yard. Since the day her father had packed “assorted notions” into a black and shiny box and had set out to seek his very elusive fortunes in the country, Yetta had toiled three times a morning with a tin pail full of water. This formed the family’s daily store and there was no surplus to be squandered. But to win Teacher’s commendation she had bent her tired energies to another trip and, behold, her reward was a scolding!
Eva Gonorowsky was terribly distressed, and the plaintive sobs which, from time to time, rent the bosom of Yetta’s dingy plaid dress were as so many blows upon her adviser’s bruised conscience. Desperately she cast about for some device by which Teacher’s favour might be reclaimed and all jubilantly she imparted it to Yetta.
“Say,” she whispered, “I tell you what you want to do. You leave your mamma wash your dress.”
“I don’t know would she like it. I washes me the face fer her und she has a mad on me.”
“She’d like it, all right, all right; ain’t I tell you how she is crazy fer what is clean? You get your dress washed and it will look awful diff’rent. I done it und she had a glad.”
Now a mamma who supports a family by the making of buttonholes, for one hundred of which she receives nine cents, has little time for washing, and Yetta determined, unaided and unadvised, to be her own laundress. She made endless trips with her tin-pail from the sixth floor to the yard and back again, she begged a piece of soap from the friendly “janitor lady” and set valiantly to work. And Eva’s prophecy was fulfilled. The dress looked “awful diff’rent” when it had dried to half its already scant proportions. From various sources Yetta collected six buttons of widely dissimilar design and colour and, with great difficulty since her hands were puffed and clumsy from long immersion in strong suds, she affixed them to the back of the dress and fell into her corner of the family couch to dream of Miss Bailey’s surprise and joy when the blended plaid should be revealed unto her. Surely, if there were any gratitude in the hearts of teachers, Yetta should be, ere the sinking of another sun, “monitors off of somethings.”
That Teacher was surprised, no one who saw the glance of puzzled inquiry with which she greeted the entrance of the transformed Yetta, could doubt. That she had a glad, Yetta, who saw the stare replaced by a smile of quick recognition, was proudly assured. Eva Gonorowsky shone triumphant.
“Ain’t I tell you?” she whispered jubilantly as she made room upon her little bench and drew Yetta down beside her. “Ain’t I tell you how she’s crazy fer what is clean? Und I ain’t never seen nothings what is clean like you be. You smells off of soap even.”
It was not surprising, for Yetta had omitted the rinsing which some laundresses advise. She had wasted none of the janitor lady’s gift. It was all in the meshes of the flannel dress to which it lent, in addition to its reassuring perfume, a smooth damp slipperiness most pleasing to the touch.
The athletic members of the First Reader Class were made familiar with this quality before the day was over, for, at the slightest exertion of its wearer, the rain-bow dress sprang, chrysalis-like, widely open up the back. Then were the combined efforts of two of the strongest members of the class required to drag the edges into apposition while Eva guided the buttons to their respective holes and Yetta “let go of her breath” with an energy which defeated its purpose.