The Priceless Pearl

								

No, they agreed they did not blame him at all; and so they decided to
let the young woman have her salary to the first of the month and let
her go immediately.
"That will be best, Bunner," said the president, and dismissed the
matter from his mind.
But Bunner, who knew that there was a possibility that even a beautiful
young woman might not enjoy losing her job, could not dismiss the
matter from his mind until the interview with her was over. He decided,
therefore, to hold it at once, and withdrew from the president's room,
where, as a directors' meeting was about to take place, the members of
the board were already beginning to gather.
Bunner was a pale fat man of forty, who was as cold to the excessive
emotion of the third vice president as he was to the inconvenient
beauty which had caused it. He paused beside Miss Leavitt's desk in the
outer office and requested a moment of her time.
She had finished going over the article on Corals and was about to
begin that on Coronach--a Scotch dirge or lamentation for the dead.
She had just been wondering whether any created being would ever want
to know anything about coronach, when Mr. Bunner spoke to her. If she
had followed her first impulse she would have looked up and beamed at
him, for she was of the most friendly and warmhearted nature; but she
remembered that beaming was not safe where men were concerned--even
when they were fat and forty--so she answered coldly, "Yes, Mr.
Bunner," and rose and followed him to his own little office.
Miss Pearl Leavitt, A. B., Rutland College, was not one of those
beauties who must be pointed out to you before you appreciate their
quality. On the contrary, the eye roving in her neighborhood was
attracted to her as to a luminary. There was nothing finicky or subtle
or fine-drawn about her. Her features were rather large and simple,
like a Greek statue's, though entirely without a statue's immobility.
Her coloring was vivid--a warm brunette complexion, a bright golden
head and a pair of large gray eyes that trembled with their own light
as they fixed themselves upon you, much as the reflection of the
evening star trembles in a quiet pool. But what had always made her
charm, more than her beauty, was her obvious human desire to be a
member of the gang--to enjoy what the crowd enjoyed and do what was
being done. It was agony to her to assume the icy, impassive demeanor
which, since she had been working in offices, she had found necessary.
But she did it. She was hard up.
When Mr. Bunner had sent away his stenographer and shut the door he sat
down and pressed his small fat hands together.
"Miss Leavitt," he said, "I am sorry to be obliged to tell you that
during the summer months when so many of our heads of departments are
away on their vacations, we shall be obliged to reduce our office
staff; and so, though your work has been most satisfactory--we have
no complaint to make of your work--still I am sorry to be obliged to