The Downstairs Girl

Jo, a hatmaker’s apprentice to Mrs. English at English’s Millinery, is determined to ask her employer for a raise. Before she can do so, Mrs. English unexpectedly fires Jo for being too opinionated with customers. Mrs. English tells Jo she cannot allow any other hatmaker in Atlanta to hire Jo, as Jo might spill trade secrets. Lizzie, the other apprentice, commiserates with a devastated Jo. Meanwhile, Mrs. Bell, the lady under whose house Jo and her adoptive father Old Gin stay in secret, walks into the shop, asking for “the Chinese girl” (8).

Impressed by an embellishment Jo made for a friend’s hat, Mrs. Bell asks her for one, too. Jo agrees to make the knot. Mrs. Bell pays Mrs. English by giving her a discount on an ad on the front page of the Focus, the newspaper the Bells run.

Two young women—Miss Saltworth and Miss Culpepper—arrive to shop for hats to wear at an upcoming horse race. The girls wish aloud that suitable young men would ask them to the race, and Mrs. Bell informs them that “ladies are encouraged to ask the men” (14) to races. Mrs. English says no respectable woman would actually do so.