Sister Carrie

“Out for a little stroll, are you, this evening?”

Carrie looked at him in amazement, and then summoned sufficient thought to reply: “Why, I don’t know you,” backing away as she did so.

“Oh, that don’t matter,” said the other affably.

She bandied no more words with him, but hurried away, reaching her own door quite out of breath. There was something in the man’s look which frightened her.

During the remainder of the week it was very much the same. One or two nights she found herself too tired to walk home and expended car fare. She was not very strong, and sitting all day affected her back. She went to bed one night before Hanson.

Transplantation is not always successful in the matter of flowers or maidens. It requires sometimes a richer soil, a better atmosphere to continue even a natural growth. It would have been better if her acclimatization had been more gradual—less rigid. She would have done better if she had not secured a position so quickly, and had seen more of the city which she constantly troubled to know about.

On the first morning it rained she found that she had no umbrella. Mi

“What did you do that for, Carrie?” asked Mi

“Oh, I need one,” said Carrie.

“You foolish girl.”

Carrie resented this, though she did not reply. She was not going to be a common shop-girl, she thought; they need not think it, either.

On the first Saturday night Carrie paid her board, four dollars. Mi

“I’m going up the street for a walk,” she said after supper.

“Not alone are you?” asked Hanson.

“Yes,” returned Carrie.

“I wouldn’t,” said Mi

“I want to see something,” said Carrie, and by the tone she put into the last word they realised for the first time she was not pleased with them.

“What’s the matter with her?” asked Hanson, when she went into the front room to get her hat.

“I don’t know,” said Mi

“Well, she ought to know better than to want to go out alone.”

Carrie did not go very far, after all. She returned and stood in the door. The next day they went out to Garfield Park, but it did not please her. She did not look well enough. In the shop next day she heard the highly coloured reports which girls give of their trivial amusements. They had been happy. On several days it rained and she used up car fare. One night she got thoroughly soaked, going to catch the car at Van Buren Street. All that evening she sat alone in the front room looking out upon the street, where the lights were reflected on the wet pavements, thinking. She had imagination enough to be moody.

On Saturday she paid another four dollars and, pocketed her fifty cents in despair. The speaking acquaintanceship which she formed with some of the girls at the shop discovered to her the fact that they had more of their earnings to use for themselves than she did. They had young men of the kind whom she, since her experience with Drouet, felt above, who took them about. She came to thoroughly dislike the light-headed young fellows of the shop. Not one of them had a show of refinement. She saw only their workday side.

There came a day when the first premonitory blast of winter swept over the city. It scudded the fleecy clouds in the heavens, trailed long, thin streamers of smoke from the tall stacks, and raced about the streets and corners in sharp and sudden puffs. Carrie now felt the problem of winter clothes. What was she to do? She had no winter jacket, no hat, no shoes. It was difficult to speak to Mi

“I don’t know what I’m going to do about clothes,” she said one evening when they were together. “I need a hat.”

Mi

“Why don’t you keep part of your money and buy yourself one?” she suggested, worried over the situation which the withholding of Carrie’s money would create.

“I’d like to for a week or so, if you don’t mind,” ventured Carrie.

“Could you pay two dollars?” asked Mi

Carrie readily acquiesced, glad to escape the trying situation, and liberal now that she saw a way out. She was elated and began figuring at once. She needed a hat first of all. How Mi

The new arrangement might have worked if sickness had not intervened. It blew up cold after a rain one afternoon when Carrie was still without a jacket. She came out of the warm shop at six and shivered as the wind struck her. In the morning she was sneezing, and going down town made it worse. That day her bones ached and she felt light-headed. Towards evening she felt very ill, and when she reached home was not hungry. Mi

“I don’t know,” said Carrie. “I feel real bad.”

She hung about the stove, suffered a chattering chill, and went to bed sick. The next morning she was thoroughly feverish.

Mi

“I don’t know,” said Carrie; “I’ll go down Monday and see if I can’t get something.”

If anything, her efforts were more poorly rewarded on this trial than the last. Her clothes were nothing suitable for fall wearing. Her last money she had spent for a hat. For three days she wandered about, utterly dispirited. The attitude of the flat was fast becoming unbearable. She hated to think of going back there each evening. Hanson was so cold. She knew it could not last much longer. Shortly she would have to give up and go home.

On the fourth day she was down town all day, having borrowed ten cents for lunch from Mi

“Well, well!” said a voice. In the first glance she beheld Drouet. He was not only rosy-cheeked, but radiant. He was the essence of sunshine and good-humour. “Why, how are you, Carrie?” he said. “You’re a daisy. Where have you been?”

Carrie smiled under his irresistible flood of geniality.

“I’ve been out home,” she said.

“Well,” he said, “I saw you across the street there. I thought it was you. I was just coming out to your place. How are you, anyhow?”

“I’m all right,” said Carrie, smiling.

Drouet looked her over and saw something different. “Well,” he said, “I want to talk to you. You’re not going anywhere in particular, are you?”

“Not just now,” said Carrie.

“Let’s go up here and have something to eat. George! but I’m glad to see you again.”

She felt so relieved in his radiant presence, so much looked after and cared for, that she assented gladly, though with the slightest air of holding back.