Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1929-12-01
Fannie Hurst
Writes ofE0ery-
day Peopk--THose
You Meet ON the
Street and on the
EIevator--She Is
the Highest Paid
Short Story Wr1ter
in th e NJ Grid.
another ofHer
Stories appears in
the MAGAZINE of
Next Sunday, S
Star:

-HE hoorwoman of the Manhattan Cafe
terra, charmingly efacient, had not al
ways BEEN that.
Back in the days when her mother
lived she had romped through her
boisterous little-girlhood in the back yards and
open streets Of the crowded neighborhood into
which she had been born.
It had not been a nice environment the one
upon which Crystal johnson had first opened
blue eyes that were to remain blue. 1t was
one of squalor, resultant ugliness, noises and
hoi pollo Then, too, ever since Crystal had
been able to remember there had been not
only the fearful and explosive mother who
had always seemed unhappy and whose blue
eyes seemed perpetually saturated with tears
but there had bsen a grandmother who had
aged under her very eyes, from woman who
was merely elderly into bent little figure that
was cronelike.
THE troubled rebelliouS, small young mother
of Crystal had died when the child was
only S. There had been something as mys-
terious, as out-of-order and as sinister about
the death of Crystals mother as there had
BEEN about her life. Offcers and social service
workers hurried in and out of the house. Doc
tors were obliged to sign papers before health
authorities in the wake of this death. Two
or three men, surly-looking fellows, one of
them a sailor, had been detained by law for
long and intimate questioning.
But after little furry the excitement Of
the little group along the stoop of the house,
the comings and goings of strange, ofhcial-
looking people had subsidized and Crystal had
settled down to life in the lean, mean little
house with her grandmother. She was pretty
enough child but something of roustabout,
due no doubt to the years of her early little
girlhood that had been spent, while her mother
and grandmother were obliged to be away from
home, in overcrowded day nurseries or playing
about the trafic-ridden streets of the neigh
borhood.
Crystal had not been a bad little GIRL just a
bit rough and tumble. That was why it came
as surprise when the neighbors, shaking their
heads, began to predict that she was following
in her mothers footsteps.
There was fire to the smoke of this hearsay
When she was 16 Crystal fed up by the
monotony Of life with her grandmother, tired
of the rigid restrictions placed upon her by
the old woman, whose heart had been twisted
by the sordid history of Crystals mother tore
herself free of restraints that wsre irksome
TO hsr 1t became gradually known that she
was running around" as the saying goes, with
girl in the neighborhood, two years her
senior. known as Addie Wigend
Just what the grandmother of Crystal felt
when the rumors of this situation began to
reach her ears no one was ever to know, be-
cause the little old woman, weather beaten
bent By toll, w.azened by grief, never let on
either to the world or to her granddaughter
that she knew. e.,
For three years Crystal kept up the pre-
tense, when she lift her home in the eve
ming, that she was going to work on night
duty at a local cafeteria. Never once during
this PERIOD as If she feared that one word of
remonstrance might be the one to startle her
granddaughter out of the home for good, did
the grandmother let on that she knew diff
ferently, and yet never once during this period
did she cease in her untiring endurance test of