срочно плачу за правильный ответ 200 рублей! - вопрос №403977

Как будет звучать это на русском языке?

Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the

other. We often hear «shop-girls» spoken of. No such persons exist.

There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that

way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be

fair. We do not refer to the girls wholive on Fifth Avenue as

«marriage-girls.»

Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work

because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around.

Nancy was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active,

country girls who had no ambition to go on the stage.

The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and

respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became

wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months

that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them.

Meddlesome Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss Lou.

While you are shaking hands please take notice--cautiously--of

their attire. Yes, cautiously; for they are as quick to resent a

stare as a lady in a box at the horse show is.

Lou is a piece-work ironer in a hand laundry. She is clothed in a

badly-fitting purple dress, and her hat plume is four inches too

long; but her ermine muff and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts

will be ticketed in the windows at $7.98 before the season is over.

Her cheeks are pink, and her light blue eyes bright. Contentment

radiates from her.

Nancy you would call a shop-girl--because you have the habit. There

is no type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so

this is what the type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour,

and the exaggerated straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the

correct flare. No furs protect her against the bitter spring air,

but she wears her short broadcloth jacket as jauntily as though

it were Persian lamb! On her face and in her eyes, remorseless

type-seeker, is the typical shop-girl expression. It is a look of

silent but contemptuous revolt against cheated womanhood; of sad

prophecy of the vengeance to come. When she laughs her loudest the

look is still there. The same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian

peasants; and those of us left will see it some day on Gabriel's

face when he comes to blow us up. It is a look that should wither

and abash man; but he has been known to smirk at it and offer

flowers--with a string tied to them.

Now lift your hat and come away, while you receive Lou's cheery

«See you again,» and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems,

somehow, to miss you and go fluttering like a white moth up over the

housetops to the stars.

The two waited on the corner for Dan. Dan was Lou's steady company.

Faithful? Well, he was on hand when Mary would have had to hire a

dozen subpoena servers to find her lamb.

«Ain't you cold, Nance?» said Lou. «Say, what a chump you are for

working in that old store for $8. a week! I made $l8.50 last week.

Of course ironing ain't as swell work as selling lace behind a

counter, but it pays. None of us ironers make less than $10. And I

don't know that it's any less respectful work, either.»