The Priceless Pearl

								

extent own me. I feel as if I could never make up to them for the way
life has treated them. I feel that way to Alfred--about his paw, you
know."
"You didn't feel that way to the man who cried in the Encyclopedia."
"I should say not," answered Pearl. "No, I can't pity him. He was
such a poor sport about it. Men are poor sports where women are
concerned--even Horace. If you had asked him to break his word because
you had had a brain storm he'd have been shocked."
"He'd have been immensely flattered," said Augusta reflectively.
"But he thinks it's absolutely all right for him to break up all your
business arrangements because he goes off halfcocked with a fantastic
idea that you've fallen in love with a man you merely want to work for."
Augusta thought a minute and then she said, "It wasn't quite so
fantastic as you think, Pearl. I was attracted by Mr. Wood. I might
have fallen in love with him if I had been brought into contact with
him much more. Oh, Pearl, haven't you ever felt a sudden charm like
that?"
Pearl shook her head: She could not say,--perhaps she did not really
herself understand why such emotions were forbidden to her, but the
true reason was that if her speaking countenance had ever turned upon
a man with that thought in mind the next instant her lovely nose would
have been buried in a tweed lapel or grating against a stiff collar.
"You know," Augusta went on, "that I really love Horace; and Mr. Wood
took no interest in me, except as a governess for his nieces; but have
you never said to yourself, 'There is the type of man whom I could have
loved madly if only things had been different'?"
Again Pearl's head wagged. Then she said, "Describe my employer to me."
"Well," Augusta began solemnly, "he has a smooth brown face out of
which look two bright-blue eyes like a Chinaman."
Pearl scowled.
"But Chinamen don't have blue eyes," she objected.
"No more they do. Why did I keep thinking of China then? China-blue,
perhaps, or maybe the way they are set. I think there is an angle--a
little up at the corners. Then his shoulders are broad, or his waist
is awfully thin, because his coat falls in that loose nice way, like
the English officers who came to lecture at college."
"Mercy," said Pearl, "what things you notice!"
"And he's very direct, and not at all afraid of saying what has to be
said. And he doesn't lecture you about women's intuition or how he made
his business success or any of those things that men always do talk
about when they offer you a job. And oh, it rings in my ears the way he
said as we parted, 'If you give me your word I know I can trust you to
keep it,' or something like that."
And at this moment the housekeeper of the club came into the dining
room, nominally to see that luncheon was being properly served, but
actually, as she soon explained, because the club was so lonely in
summer, and her little dog had been killed by an automobile the week