The Priceless Pearl

								

the morning she had entirely forgotten the fact.
Pearl, like Augusta herself, was too much occupied with her own mood to
notice that a mood was already waiting for her. It seemed to her that
Augusta and Horace were just sitting there as usual, without much to
say to each other. She had been looking for a job all the morning, and
all the day before, and was discovering that beauty may find it as hard
to get a job as it had been to keep one.
"Hullo, Gussie! Hullo, Horrie!" she said, striding in, full of her own
troubles. "I think men are just terrible."
"You must have changed a lot," said Bayne, who was in no humor to let
anything pass.
He had known Pearl since her freshman year at Rutland, and was
accustomed to seeing her surrounded by a flock of the condemned sex,
whose attentions had never seemed unwelcome.
"Yes, I've changed," said Pearl. "You see, I've worked for men--at
least I've tried to. I've been trying to all morning. If they kept
turning you down because you were lame or marked with smallpox they'd
feel ashamed, but if they turn you down because they think you're
good-looking----" Miss Leavitt here interrupted her narrative to give a
grinning representation of the speaker. "'Forgive my speaking plainly,
but you are too good-looking for office work.' Doesn't it occur to
them that even good-looking people must eat? And they are so smug
and pleased with themselves. Well, here I am with two weeks' salary
between me and starvation--all on account of my looks. I believe I'll
go and teach in a convent, where there are not any men to be rendered
hysterical by my appearance."
And she gave a terrible glance at Horace, and then feeling she had been
too severe she beamed at him--beaming at Horace was perfectly safe--and
added, "I've always liked you, Horrie; but I have no use for your
sex--especially as employers; they are too emotional."
"And what would you say, Pearl," said Horace in a deadly impartial
tone, "if a man offered you a job, and in the first interview told his
life's story, asked you to write to him every day and promised you
jewels if you stayed on the job until he got back--what would you say?"
"I wouldn't say a word," answered Pearl. "I'd take to the tall timber.
I know that kind."
"You are both absolutely ridiculous," said Augusta haughtily.
"You are absolutely right," said Horace.
"You don't mean to say that someone has been trying to wangle Augusta
away from you, Horace?" asked Pearl, generously abandoning all interest
in her own problems for the moment.
The two others said no and yes simultaneously, and began to pour out
the story. Augusta's point was that Horace did not respect her business
honor or else he would not ask her to break--Horace's point was that
Augusta did not really love him or she wouldn't think up all these
excuses--she'd marry him as he asked her to do. Ah, but he hadn't had
any idea of getting married until he heard that she was going to take