THE MORNING VIEW

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 280, 20 August 1921, Page 8

THE MORNING VIEW

MILLIE OF THE MILLINERY

(By

F.E.B.)

What is tho "view” of the average man in the street who possesses unlimited tobacco, tram tickets, and small change, and has three good, meals and an occasional drink for every working day—in addition to a satisfactory balance behind the bank counter And. that question being asked, what, in effect, is "view”? I was told this story by tho senior girl at the ladies’ hosiery counter. And she ought to know, as tor five years she has lived in n twelve by eight room, with the butter mixed up with the, hairbrush, ami a little second-hand' gramophone underneath tho bed. There is no room for it anywhere else. It is the story of Millie, the youngest shop girl, who was the most incompetent and the most beloved soul that ever called out "sign, please,” in Blank’s department store. To begin with, Millie was about five feet nothing and consumptive. The other girls laughed at her when first she came. She showed then that she would never be any "good” as a saleswoman. She made mistakes every hour—sometimes every five minutes. She was never growled at and never rebuked. No one, from austere floor-walker to stern, corseted lady in charge of the millinery department, ever said a hard word to her. When she marie a mistake and a customei was inclined to become vexed and intolerant, Millie’s brown eyes behind her spectacles would glisten as do those of a dog when his beloved master, in a temper, hurts him. Usually, it the customer was a human woman and not a popinjay, she would pat the little shop girl’s hands and tell her it was all right” and not to bother. No one knew where she lived. At half past five on each evening she would stand in a Karori car, looking down with her inscrutable eyes at fat gentlemen occuping all the seats; then she would gaze out into the darkness, lost in thought. From tho Karori tunnel she would climb into the hills, where, no one knew. Slip was never late for work in the mornings. A week after she had begun work at Blank’s, the shop girls used to arrive at work ten minutes early. They used to sit Millie on a counter. And this is what happened, as the senior girl told me Millie, the five-foot-nothing consumptive, with the threadbare black dress and the worn stockings, told her fellows of her "view.” "Up on tho hills,” she would say, "in the early mornings. . • ■ Girls, it s too wonderful. Rain or fine, I m always up when, the sun rises, and I lock out over the harbour and out to sea. On blue, wonderful, mornings, when all the air is so peaceful and quiet, when the sun shines out of a cloudless sky, I look out of my window. And I sit there until it’s time for me to come to work. This morning I could see snow over on the Rimutakas. Right in front of me the Orongorongos were whitecovered. . 'tff’ie hills over by Day s Bay looked deep purple and brown, and far out to sea, out by Island Bay, the deep blue water shone. I didn’t look down into the city. Tt was all too redroofed and hard-looking. I watched the morning mists over the Hutt Valley break up, and leave in their place a wonderful shimmering picture of all colours. If the people uho design dresses could only get the colours I saw this morning, customers would look like angels." She looked over at Mrs. Dash, the oldest woman in the store, whose husband had divorced her.

"Isn’t God good?” she esked. "Down in the city where we have to corns’ everything is so hard. There is no joy in the narrow streets. But in half an hour I can gaze out from the hills and thank God lam alive. It is wonderful that He has given us the chance to see His works. They aren’t stone buildings and trams. If He had His way He would hove all the little children playing on the hills by my place and looking out over the wafer.”

Mrs. Dash, miserable always, with never a cheery word for anyone, but with a huge quantify of self-pity, gulped. Then she nodded.

"You’re right, Millie,” she said. "But what chance do we get to seo anything but streets and apartment houses? How can we find happiness?”

Millie looked into space. "Pick out your view,” she said. "Look out every morning, and you’ll find it. . ..."

Thus did Millie, the handicapped, speak each morning to her friends. One day she would tell them how the early ferry' steamer to Rona Bay had looked like a tiny' model .gliding over a silver sea. Another day she would tell them of the fairies of the clouds, who danced and pirouetted over the far-off hills, of the wild waves, in a storm, that broke in white spray over Terawhiti, of the red and glorious tints of the sunrise over by’ the horizon. Tn time Millie became an institution at Blank’s. Tho dullest days became bright, cheered by the glorious view from "Millie’s window.”

Then Millie left them. She left her window, her decrepit mother, her ramshackle house, fo enter into tlio realisation of her dreams. Customers to Blank’s on the morning of her death went out feeling that the world had lost something. Even tho manager blew his nose violently, and the Chief Milliner sobbed unashamedly. The Senior Girl at the ladies’ hoisery counter went up into the Northland hills to Millie’s house. Un and up. she climbed—and then down into a cleft in the hills where little sunlight came in At the bottom of the valley, pressed close against the side of the hill, was the. little house. Around, on all sides were the enclosing walls, brown, gorse-covered in places. With peculiar dread, the Senior Girl knocked at the door; A slatternly woman opened it. her eves red with weeping. Silently who led the way into Millie’s room. The little figure looked painfully small and white, lying there on the narrows .bed. Her window looked out onto a wall of brown earth., three feet away.