ONLY A HOME GIRL AT HEART

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 120, 10 October 1941, Page 42

ONLY A HOME GIRL AT HEART

But The War Made Her A Cruripigmentalist

LL the neighbours used to say what a nice girl. Winsome was. She always remembered to inquire after Mrs. Jones’s cat’s kittens and she was always available to mind the baby if the Fosters wanted to go to the pictures. She had a quiet smile, a way with elderly uncles, and an aversion to makeup. She never smoked, or attended five o’clock sherry parties, and only went to wrestling once a fortnight. She spent her days in helping her mother with the house or the garden, and in the evening she would sit by the fire with a Good Book or a piece of tapestry, sewing each stitch with loving care. (No, it was not for her Box-it was for her Mother’s birthday present.) Winsome had had an adequate education, good enough, that is, to enable her to shine in any social sphere, but not good enough to enable her to take up teaching or become a member of Parliament. She had all the other accom-

plishments. She played the piano and had a pleasant singing voice, but she neither played nor sang well enough to teach playing or singing or to get two guineas a time from the NBS. She painted well enough to keep all her friends and relations in Christmas presents, but not well enough to get a position as official war artist with the forces overseas. If she had been born a hundred years earlier she would have been an excellent daughter and later on an excellent wife and mother. But alas! her qualifications did little to fit her for the Modern’ Struggle. Her mother had ideas about woman’s place outside the house and it grieved her to find that a daughter of hers was content to sit quietly at home or busy herself about the domestic hearth when she could have become a Minister of Religion or a W.AA.F. Her fiancé, Hubert Footlebury, thought that a knowledge of cooking and. a simple affectionate nature did little to redeem a wife from the parasitic class, and he spent his two evenings a week talking of the virtues of the Working Wife instead of taking Winsome to the pictures. So Winsome found that instead of being rewarded for the virtues she had she was given pep talks about the ones she didn’t have, and in spite of the natural brightness of her nature she dropped many an unseen tear into the breakfast dish water. * + * ‘THE months slid by and the routine of Winsome’s uneventful life continued undisturbed. But as 1940 gave place to 1941-Winsome found it neces- |

sary to devote an additional half hour a day to her weekly darning. By winter she was spending two hours a day, and one day in early spring the last thread of her last silk stocking parted in her over-anxious fingers. The situation was desperate, How could Winsome maintain her reputation as a Nice Girl if she went to town stockingless? In desperation she bought a bottle of the new stockingless cream. She applied it in the privacy of her bedroom. She drew the straight seam down the back of her leg with eyebrow pencil, she went further and faithfully imitated the fashion marks. And with a touch of genius she even simulated the darned heel which is at present the hallmark of the genuine stocking. Her mother for the first time in her life realised with a pang of gratitude that at least one of her daughter’s propensities had some practical value. So now Winsome devoted half an hour each morning to providing stockings for her mother .and _ herself. * * Eg HE fame of Winsome’s accomplishment spread far and wide. All her friends begged her to apply their stockingless cream for them, and every morning and afternoon crowds of people thronged the house and grounds begging Winsome to employ her talents on them. She no longer had any time to arrange the flowers or to take the dog for a walk, and was reluctantly compelled to make a small charge for her services in order to pay for a man to come each night and remove the heel marks from (Continued on next page)

TALE FOR THE TIMES (Continued from previous. page)

the lawn and garden before her father came home. But one evening he came home sooner than was expected, so Winsome was forced to take rooms in town and make a slightly bigger charge for her professional attendance. The coming of the warm weather and the gradual diminishing of the supplies of hoarded stockings brought more and more clients to Winsome’s salon. She was now compelled to spend part of her time training assistants to help in the work and these in turn travelled. to other centres to set up other clinics and to train people to run them, * * ca ITH the training of great numbers of assistants Winsome found that the actual work of leg-painting could proceed without her, so she devoted her artistic talents to the designing of a suitably decorated Diploma which was to be awarded to all those students who at the end of three years’ training passed the requisite examinations and _ thus qualified as members of the Society of Cruripigmentalists. Hubert had meanwhile been watching Winsome’s career with interest, and having satisfied himself that Winsome had all along been a Career Girl at Heart he agreed to fix a date for the wedding. So they were married and lived happily ever after, and Hubert never found out that each morning after he had dropped her at the office Winsome would take the next train home. and spend a happy day singing to herself as she polished each |

breakfast.dish with loving care.

M.

I.