The Priceless Pearl

								

this place! He had--he had--he had come there to tell her, only she had
been so excited about this other man---- Nonsense, the trouble with
Horace was that he was jealous. No, he was not at all jealous, but if
he were he had good reason to be--writing to a man every day, and
accepting jewels----
Pearl kept looking from one to the other, deeply interested. In the
first pause--which did not come for a long time--she said gravely, "How
is it, Gussie? Do you really want to marry Horace?"
She said it very nicely, but on her expressive face was written the
thought that she herself could not see how anyone could want to marry
him.
"I do, I do," answered Augusta rather tearfully; "but how can I when
I've given my word?"
"I'll tell you how you can," said Pearl. "You marry him and disappear
into the wilds of Canada, and I'll take your place with the Conway
family."
They stared at each other like people waiting for the sound of an
explosion. They were trying to think of obstacles.
"Except," said Pearl, "that I'm not efficient like you, and not very
good at mathematics."
"You were efficient in the way you ran the junior ball," said Augusta.
"Everyone said----"
A spasm of amusement crossed Pearl's face.
"Did I never tell you about that?" she said. "I vamped the senior at
Amherst who had run theirs, and he not only gave me all the dope but
he did most of my work. I was a mine of information. But that isn't
efficiency."
"I disagree with you," said Augusta.
The more she thought of this idea, the more it seemed to her perfect.
There had always been a kind of magic about Pearl, and wasn't magic
the highest form of human efficiency? It was not breaking one's word
to substitute a better article than that contracted for. To send Pearl
in her place would be keeping her word doubly. She saw Pearl charming
Antonia, dazzling the boy, setting all the Conway household to rights
by ways peculiarly her own.
"But perhaps they won't want Pearl," said Horace. "I mean----"
"They won't have any choice," said the two girls together.
"But I mean," reiterated Horace, "that no one would want a governess
who looked like Pearl."
Then the storm broke over his head. What? Wouldn't he even let her be a
governess? Did he want her just to starve? Would he tell her what she
could do? Starve perhaps--just starve--all men were alike. Again Pearl
began to stride up and down the room, flicking the front of her small
black hat with her forefinger until finally it fell off and rolled
on the floor like an old-fashioned cannon ball. If Horace had spoken
from motives of diplomacy he could not have done better for himself.
His objection made the two girls a unit for the plan. It just showed,
Pearl explained, that if Horace, who had known her all these years,
really considered her looks an obstacle to her taking a place even as
a governess, why, it was hopeless to suppose that she could ever get