Your car is too big for one person to stir—       Your is a little man, too;
     Yet he lifts that machine, does the little chauffeur,
      By the power of a gentle jackscrew.
Diantha worked.
 
For all her employees she demanded a ten-hour day, she worked fourteen; rising at six and not getting to bed till eleven, when her charges were all safely in their rooms for the night.
 
They were all up at five-thirty or thereabouts, breakfasting at six, and the girls off in time to reach their various places by seven. Their day was from 7 A. M. to 8.30 P. M., with half an hour out, from 11.30 to twelve, for their lunch; and three hours, between 2.20 and 5.30, for their own time, including their tea. Then they worked again from 5.30 to 8.30, on the dinner and the dishes, and then they came home to a pleasant nine o'clock supper, and had all hour to dance or rest before the 10.30 bell for bed time.
 
Special friends and “cousins” often came home with them, and frequently shared the supper—for a quarter—and the dance for nothing.
 
It was no light matter in the first place to keep twenty girls with such a regime, and working with the steady required, and in the second place to keep twenty employers contented with them. There were failures on both sides; half a dozen families gave up the plan, and it took time to replace them; and three girls had to be asked to resign before the year was over. But most of them had been in training in the summer, and had listened for months to Diantha's earnest talks to the clubs, with good results.
 
“Remember we are not doing this for ourselves alone,” she would say to them. “Our experiment is going to make this kind of work easier for all home workers everywhere. You may not like it at first, but neither did you like the old way. It will grow easier as we get used to it; and we must keep the rules, because we made them!”
 
She composed a neat little circular, distributed it widely, and kept a pile in her lunch room for people to take.
 
It read thus:
 
                    union HOUSE
                 Food and Service.
 
     General Housework by the week..... $10.00
     General Housework by the day....... $2.00
      Ten hours work a day, and furnish their own food.
     Additional by the hour....... $.20
     Special service for entertainments, maids and waitresses,
                    by the hour..........$.25
      for entertainments.
      for .
      Lunches packed and delivered.
     Caffeteria... 12 to 2
What annoyed the young manager most was the and irregularity involved in her work, the facts varying from her calculations.
 
In the house all ran . Solemn Mrs. Thorvald did the laundry work for thirty-five—by the aid of her husband and a big for the “flat work.” The girls' washing 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 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 class 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 for the further development of the business.
 
Her two housemaids were 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 , 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 , 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 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 ship, and her paper plans looked very weak sometimes, as bills turned out to be larger than she had allowed for, or her unaccountably . But if the difficulties were great, the girl's courage was greater. “It is simply a big piece of work,” she assured 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 .
 
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 closed pans, and cut by into thin even slices, not a crust wasted; for they were ground into and used in the cooking.
 
The filling for her sandwiches was made from fish, flesh, and ; from cheese and jelly and fruit and vegetables; and so named or numbered that the general favorites were gradually .
 
Mr. Thaddler chatted with her over the counter, as far as she would allow it, and more with his friends on the verandah.
 
“Porne,” 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. Porne, “and a 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 damn shame the way the women go on about her.”
 
“Not all of them, surely,” protested Mr. Porne.
 
“No, not all of 'em,—but enough of 'em to make , you may be sure. Women are the devil, sometimes.”
 
Mr. Porne smiled without answer, and Mr. Thaddler went sulking away—a bag of cakes 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. , 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 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 with ranchmen and teamsters. Serve them he must, but chat with them he need not. The 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 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 cookery, and were more than pleased.
 
Hungry tourists were wholly without prejudice, and prized her lunches for their own sake. They upon the caffeteria in , 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 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 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 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 assistance; Mrs. Weatherstone determined that she should.
 
“I feel like a big already,” she said. “I don't think even you realize the money there is in this thing! You are interested in establishing 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, 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 as the year advanced. Every fault that could be found in the undertaking she upon and enlarged; every doubt that could be cast upon it she heavily piled up; and her 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 , 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 and a cap that covered the hair while cooking and ; 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 apron 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, assured manner of these skilled employees was a very different thing from the old slipshod methods of the ordinary general servant.
 
So the work slowly , 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, , “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 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 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 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.
 
Diantha was puzzled—a little alarmed. Her slow, steady lifting of the prejudice against her was checked. She could not put her finger on the enemy, yet felt one distinctly, and had her own suspicions. But she also had her new move well arranged by this time.
 
Then a story of the place came out in a San Francisco paper, and a flock of local reporters buzzed in to sample the victim. They helped themselves to the , and liked it, but that did not their pens. They talked with such of the girls as they could get in touch with, and wrote such versions of these talks as suited them.
 
They called repeatedly at union House, but Diantha refused to see them. Finally she was visited by the Episcopalian clergyman. He had heard her talk at the Club, was favorably impressed by the girl herself, and honestly by the dark stories he now heard about union House.
 
“My dear young lady,” he said, “I have called to see you in your own interests. I do not, as you perhaps know, approve of your schemes. I consider them—ah—subversive of the best interests of the home! But I think you mean well, though mistakenly. Now I fear you are not aware that this-ah—ill-considered undertaking of yours, is giving rise to considerable comment in the community. There is—ah—there is a great deal being said about this business of yours which I am sure you would regret if you knew it. Do you think it is wise; do you think it is—ah—right, my dear Miss Bell, to attempt to carry on a—a place of this sort, without the presence of a—of a Matron of assured ?”
 
Diantha smiled rather coldly.
 
“May I trouble you to step into the back , Dr. Aberthwaite,” she said; and then;
 
“May I have the pleasure of presenting to you Mrs. Henderson Bell—my mother?”
 
“Wasn't it great!” said Mrs. Weatherstone; “I was there you see,—I'd come to call on Mrs. Bell—she's a dear,—and in came Mrs. Thaddler—”
 
“Mrs. Thaddler?”
 
“O I know it was old Aberthwaite, but he represented Mrs. Thaddler and her , and had come there to preach to Diantha about propriety—I heard him,—and she brought him in and very politely introduced him to her mother!—it was rich, Isabel.”
 
“How did Diantha manage it?” asked her friend.
 
“She's been trying to arrange it for ever so long. Of course her father objected—you'd know that. But there's a sister—not a bad sort, only very limited; she's taken the old man to board, as it were, and I guess the mother really set her foot down for once—said she had a right to visit her own daughter!”
 
“It would seem so,” Mrs. Porne agreed. “I am so glad! It will be so much easier for that brave little woman now.”
 
It was.
 
Diantha held her mother in her arms the night she came, and cried tike a baby.
 
“O mother dear!” she , “I'd no idea I should miss you so much. O you blessed comfort!”
 
Her mother cried a bit too; she enjoyed this daughter more than either of her older children, and missed her more. A mother loves all her children, naturally; but a mother is also a person—and may, without sin, have personal preferences.
 
She took hold of Diantha's mass of papers with the eagerness of a questing hound.
 
“You've got all the bills, of course,” she demanded, with her anxious rising inflection.
 
“Every one,” said the girl. “You taught me that much. What puzzles me is to make things balance. I'm making more than I thought in some lines, and less in others, and I can't make it come out straight.”
 
“It won't, altogether, till the end of the year I dare say,” said Mrs. Bell, “but let's get clear as far as we can. In the first place we must separate your business,—see how much each one pays.”
 
“The first one I want to establish,” said her daughter, “is the girl's club. Not just this one, with me to run it. But to show that any group of twenty or thirty girls could do this thing in any city. Of course where rents and provisions were high they'd have to charge more. I want to make an average showing somehow. Now can you disentangle the girl part front the lunch part and the food part, mother dear, and make it all straight?”
 
Mrs. Bell could and did; it gave her absolute delight to do it. She set down the total of Diantha's expenses so far in the Service Department, as follows:
 
     Rent of union House       ............