What Diantha Did

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Diantha offered her the place, boy and all. "He can be 'bell boy' and
help you in the kitchen, too. Can't you, Hector?" Hector rolled large
adoring eyes at her, but said nothing. His mother accepted the
proposition, but without enthusiasm. "I can't keep no eye on him, Miss,
if I'm cookin' an less'n you keep your eye on him they's no work to be
got out'n any kind o' boy."

"What is your last name, Julianna?" Diantha asked her.

"I suppose, as a matter o' fac' its de name of de last nigger I
married," she replied. "Dere was several of 'em, all havin' different
names, and to tell you de truf Mis' Bell, I got clean mixed amongst 'em.
But Julianna's my name--world without end amen."

So Diantha had to waive her theories about the surnames of servants in
this case.

"Did they all die?" she asked with polite sympathy.

"No'm, dey didn't none of 'em die--worse luck."

"I'm afraid you have seen much trouble, Julianna," she continued
sympathetically; "They deserted you, I suppose?"

Julianna laid her long spoon upon the table and stood up with great
gravity. "No'm," she said again, "dey didn't none of 'em desert me on
no occasion. I divorced 'em."

Marital difficulties in bulk were beyond Diantha's comprehension, and
she dropped the subject.

Union House opened in the autumn. The vanished pepper trees were dim
with dust in Orchardina streets as the long rainless summer drew to a
close; but the social atmosphere fairly sparkled with new interest.
Those who had not been away chattered eagerly with those who had, and
both with the incoming tide of winter visitors.

"That girl of Mrs. Porne's has started her housekeeping shop!"

"That 'Miss Bell' has got Mrs. Weatherstone fairly infatuated with her
crazy schemes."

"Do you know that Bell girl has actually taken Union House? Going to
make a Girl's Club of it!"

"Did you ever _hear_ of such a thing! Diantha Bell's really going to
try to run her absurd undertaking right here in Orchardina!"

They did not know that the young captain of industry had deliberately
chosen Orchardina as her starting point on account of the special
conditions. The even climate was favorable to "going out by the day,"
or the delivery of meals, the number of wealthy residents gave
opportunity for catering on a large scale; the crowding tourists and
health seekers made a market for all manner of transient service and
cooked food, and the constant lack of sufficient or capable servants
forced the people into an unwilling consideration of any plan of
domestic assistance.

In a year's deliberate effort Diantha had acquainted herself with the
rank and file of the town's housemaids and day workers, and picked her
assistants carefully. She had studied the local conditions thoroughly,
and knew her ground. A big faded building that used to be "the Hotel'
in Orchardina's infant days, standing, awkward and dingy on a site too
valuable for a house lot and not yet saleable as a business block, was
the working base.

A half year with Mrs. Weatherstone gave her $500 in cash, besides the
$100 she had saved at Mrs. Porne's; and Mrs. Weatherstone's cheerfully
offered backing gave her credit.

"I hate to let you," said Diantha, "I want to do it all myself."

"You are a painfully perfect person, Miss Bell," said her last employer,
pleasantly, "but you have ceased to be my housekeeper and I hope you
will continue to be my friend. As a friend I claim the privilege of
being disagreeable. If you have a fault it is conceit. Immovable
Colossal Conceit! And Obstinacy!"

"Is that all?" asked Diantha.

"It's all I've found--so far," gaily retorted Mrs. Weatherstone. "Don't
you see, child, that you can't afford to wait? You have reasons for
hastening, you know. I don't doubt you could, in a series of years,
work up this business all stark alone. I have every confidence in those
qualities I have mentioned! But what's the use? You'll need credit for
groceries and furniture. I am profoundly interested in this business.
I am more than willing to advance a little capital, or to ensure your
credit. A man would have sense enough to take me up at once."

"I believe you are right," Diantha reluctantly agreed. "And you shan't
lose by it!"

Her friends were acutely interested in her progress, and showed it in
practical ways. The New Woman's Club furnished five families of patrons
for the regular service of cooked food, which soon grew, with
satisfaction, to a dozen or so, varying from time to time. The many
families with invalids, and lonely invalids without families, were glad
to avail themselves of the special delicacies furnished at Union House.
Picnickers found it easier to buy Diantha's marvelous sandwiches than to
spend golden morning hours in putting up inferior ones at home; and many
who cooked for themselves, or kept servants, were glad to profit by this
outside source on Sunday evenings and "days out."

There was opposition too; both the natural resistance of inertia and
prejudice, and the active malignity of Mrs. Thaddler.

The Pornes were sympathetic and anxious.

"That place'll cost her all of $10,000 a year, with those twenty-five to
feed, and they only pay $4.50 a week--I know that!" said Mr. Porne.

"It does look impossible," his wife agreed, "but such is my faith in
Diantha Bell I'd back her against Rockefeller!"

Mrs. Weatherstone was not alarmed at all. "If she _should_ fail--which
I don't for a moment expect--it wont ruin me," she told Isabel. "And if
she succeeds, as I firmly believe she will, why, I'd be willing to risk
almost anything to prove Mrs. Thaddler in the wrong."

Mrs. Thaddler was making herself rather disagreeable. She used what
power she had to cry down the undertaking, and was so actively
malevolent that her husband was moved to covert opposition. He never
argued with his wife--she was easily ahead of him in that art, and, if
it came to recriminations, had certain controvertible charges to make
against him, which mode him angrily silent. He was convinced in a dim
way that her ruthless domineering spirit, and the sheer malice she often
showed, were more evil things than his own bad habits; and that even in
their domestic relation her behavior really caused him more pain and
discomfort than he caused her; but he could not convince her of it,
naturally.

"That Diantha Bell is a fine girl," he said to himself. "A damn fine
girl, and as straight as a string!"

There had crept out, through the quenchless leak of servants talk, a
varicolored version of the incident of Mathew and the transom; and the
town had grown so warm for that young gentleman that he had gone to
Alaska suddenly, to cool off, as it were. His Grandmother, finding Mrs.
Thaddler invincible with this new weapon, and what she had so long
regarded as her home now visibly Mrs. Weatherstone's, had retired in
regal dignity to her old Philadelphia establishment, where she upheld
the standard of decorum against the weakening habits of a deteriorated
world, for many years.

As Mr. Thaddler thought of this sweeping victory, he chuckled for the
hundredth time. "She ought to make good, and she will. Something's got
to be done about it," said he.

Diantha had never liked Mr. Thaddler; she did not like that kind of man
in general, nor his manner toward her in particular. Moreover he was
the husband of Mrs. Thaddler. She did not know that he was still the
largest owner in the town's best grocery store, and when that store
offered her special terms for her exclusive trade, she accepted the
proposition thankfully.

She told Ross about it, as a matter well within his knowledge, if not
his liking, and he was mildly interested. "I am much alarmed at this
new venture," he wrote, "but you must get your experience. I wish I
could save you. As to the groceries, those are wholesale rates, nearly;
they'll make enough on it. Yours is a large order you see, and steady."

When she opened her "Business Men's Lunch" Mr. Thaddler had a still
better opportunity. He had a reputation as a high flyer, and had really
intended to sacrifice himself on the altar of friendship by patronizing
and praising this "undertaking" at any cost to his palate; but no
sacrifice was needed.

Diantha's group of day workers had their early breakfast and departed,
taking each her neat lunch-pail,--they ate nothing of their
employers;--and both kitchen and dining room would have stood idle till
supper time. But the young manager knew she must work her plant for all
it was worth, and speedily opened the dining room with the side entrance
as a "Caffeteria," with the larger one as a sort of meeting place;
papers and magazines on the tables.

From the counter you took what you liked, and seated yourself, and your
friends, at one of the many small tables or in the flat-armed chairs in
the big room, or on the broad piazza; and as this gave good food,
cheapness, a chance for a comfortable seat and talk and a smoke, if one
had time, it was largely patronized.

Mr. Thaddler, as an experienced _bon vivant,_ despised sandwiches.
"Picnicky makeshifts" he called them,--"railroad rations"--"bread and
leavings," and when he saw these piles on piles of sandwiches, listed
only as "No. 1," "No. 2" "No. 3," and so on, his benevolent intention
wavered. But he pulled himself together and took a plateful, assorted.

"Come on, Porne," he said, "we'll play it's a Sunday school picnic," and
he drew himself a cup of coffee, finding hot milk, cream and sugar
crystals at hand. "I never saw a cheap joint where you could fix it
yourself, before," he said,--and suspiciously tasted the mixture.

"By jing! That's coffee!" he cried in surprise. "There's no scum on
the milk, and the cream's cream!" Five cents! She won't get rich on
this."

Then he applied himself to his "No. 1" sandwich, and his determined
expression gave way to one of pleasure. "Why that's bread--real bread!
I believe she made it herself!"

She did in truth,--she and Julianna with Hector as general assistant.
The big oven was filled several times every morning: the fresh rolls
disappeared at breakfast and supper, the fresh bread was packed in the
lunch pails, and the stale bread was even now melting away in large
bites behind the smiling mouths and mustaches of many men. Perfect
bread, excellent butter, and "What's the filling I'd like to know?"
More than one inquiring-minded patron split his sandwich to add sight to
taste, but few could be sure of the flavorsome contents, fatless,
gritless, smooth and even, covering the entire surface, the last
mouthful as perfect as the first. Some were familiar, some new, all
were delicious.

The six sandwiches were five cents, the cup of coffee five, and the
little "drop cakes," sweet and spicy, were two for five. Every man
spent fifteen cents, some of them more; and many took away small cakes
in paper bags, if there were any left.

"I don't see how you can do it, and make a profit," urged Mr. Eltwood,
making a pastorial call. "They are so good you know!"

Diantha smiled cheerfully. "That's because all your ideas are based on
what we call 'domestic economy,' which is domestic waste. I buy in
large quantities at wholesale rates, and my cook with her little helper,
the two maids, and my own share of the work, of course, provides for the
lot. Of course one has to know how."

"Whenever did you find--or did you create?--those heavenly sandwiches?"
he asked.

"I have to thank my laundress for part of that success," she said.
"She's a Dane, and it appears that the Danes are so fond of sandwiches
that, in large establishments, they have a 'sandwich kitchen' to prepare
them. It is quite a bit of work, but they are good and inexpensive.
There is no limit to the variety."

As a matter of fact this lunch business paid well, and led to larger
things.

The girl's methods were simple and so organized as to make one hand wash
the other. Her house had some twenty-odd bedrooms, full accommodations
for kitchen and laundry work on a large scale, big dining, dancing, and
reception rooms, and broad shady piazzas on the sides. Its position on
a corner near the business part of the little city, and at the foot of
the hill crowned with so many millionaires and near millionaires as
could get land there, offered many advantages, and every one was taken.

The main part of the undertaking was a House Worker's Union; a group of
thirty girls, picked and trained. These, previously working out as
servants, had received six dollars a week "and found." They now worked
an agreed number of hours, were paid on a basis by the hour or day, and
"found" themselves. Each had her own room, and the broad porches and
ball room were theirs, except when engaged for dances and meetings of
one sort and another.

It was a stirring year's work, hard but exciting, and the only
difficulty which really worried Diantha was the same that worried the
average housewife--the accounts.

WHAT DIANTHA DID

XI.

THE POWER OF THE SCREW.

Your car is too big for one person to stir--
Your chauffeur 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 contented
with such a regime, and working with the steady excellence 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 laboriously 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 labor by the hour . . . $ .20
Special service for entertainments, maids and waitresses, by the hour .
. . $ .25
Catering for entertainments.
Delicacies for invalids.
Lunches packed and delivered.
Caffeteria . . . 12 to 2

What annoyed the young manager most was the uncertainty and irregularity
involved in her work, the facts varying considerably from her
calculations.

In the house all ran smoothly. Solemn Mrs. Thorvald did the laundry
work for thirty-five--by the aid of her husband and a big mangle 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 housekeeper 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 heartily for the further development of the business.

Her two housemaids were specially 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
undertaking, 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 steadily, 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 standardized 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 patronage unaccountably dwindled. 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 vacancy.

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
cylindrical closed pans, and cut by machinery into thin even slices, not
a crust wasted; for they were ground into crumbs and used in the
cooking.

The filling for her sandwiches was made from fish, flesh, and fowl; from
cheese and jelly and fruit and vegetables; and so named or numbered that
the general favorites were gradually determined.

Mr. Thaddler chatted with her over the counter, as far as she would
allow it, and discoursed more fully 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 benefactor 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 mischief, you may be
sure. Women are the devil, sometimes."

Mr. Porne smiled without answer, and Mr. Thaddler went sulking away--a
bag of cakes bulging 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.
Warden, 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 piazza 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 sociable with ranchmen and teamsters.
Serve them he must, but chat with them he need not. The stout 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
steered 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 invalid cookery, and were more
than pleased.

Hungry tourists were wholly without prejudice, and prized her lunches
for their own sake. They descended upon the caffeteria in chattering
swarms, 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 shack 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 depot 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
fretting 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 investor 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, relentless 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 antagonistic as the year advanced. Every fault that could be
found in the undertaking she pounced upon and enlarged; every doubt that
could be cast upon it she heavily piled up; and her opposition grew more
rancorous as Mr. Thaddler enlarged in her hearing upon the excellence of
Diantha's lunches and the wonders of her management.

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