In six years she had cleared a
large debt from the shop and had a comfortable balance in the bank.
Girls who worked in factories or in stores came and left most of their
meagre surplus in her shop and other girls who didn't work came in,
throwing dollars about and talking about "gentlemen friends." Edith
hated the bargaining but attended to it with shrewdness and with a
quiet disarming little smile on her face. What she liked was to sit
quietly in the room and trim hats. When the business grew she had a
woman to tend the shop and a girl to sit beside her and help with the
hats. She had a friend, the wife of a motorman on the street-car line,
who sometimes came to see her in the evening. The friend was a plump
little woman, dissatisfied with her marriage, and she got Edith to
make her several new hats a year for which she paid nothing.
Edith went to the dance at which she met McGregor with the motorman's
wife and a girl who lived upstairs over a bakery next door to the
shop, The dance was held in a hall over a saloon and was given for the
benefit of a political organisation in which the baker was a leader.
The wife of the baker came in and sold Edith two tickets, one for
herself and one for the wife of the motorman who happened to be
sitting with her at the time.
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