Page:Side talks with girls (1895).djvu/42

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Side Talks with Girls

Government, and that she spends more money than she earns for her wearing apparel. Many other girls are helped out by their friends at home, so that the girl who has to live and dress herself out of her own earnings, unless she is very careful, chances the being discharged because she does not look "as well as the other young ladies behind the counter." My girl is good at mending and freshening up, and as yet her eyes permit her to brush and clean her frocks in the evenings, but girls who have been at work many years, are, unhappily, forced either to go shabby and untidy-looking, or to mend their belongings on Sunday, because they are too tired at night. I am not writing anything that emanates from my fancy. I am stating simple facts, and I know absolutely whereof I speak.

Too often, because she is unused to thinking out money problems, my girl gets into debt. Her landlady may be kindhearted, and trust her for a week's board, or even for a little longer. She may have borrowed a little money from a girl who has saved some, and at the drug store or at the dressmaker's she may have a little account. What is she to do? Say that she pays her board promptly, she will still find herself a week or two behind. She does not make enough money to catch up, and, unfortunately, she seldom has the courage to go to her creditors and offer to pay her