The Priceless Pearl

								

tell you that during the summer months, when so many of our heads of
departments----"
He did not know what was the matter; the sentence appeared to be a
circular sentence without exits.
Miss Leavitt folded her arms with a rapid whirling motion. Of course,
since the first three words of his sentence she had known that she had
lost her job.
"Just why is it that I am being sent away?" she said.
Sulky children, before they actually burst into tears, have a way
of almost visibly swelling like a storm cloud. It would be wrong to
suggest that anything as lovely as Pearl Leavitt could swell, and yet
there was something of this effect as she stared down at the office
manager. He did not like her tone, nor yet her look.
He said with a sort of acid smile, "I was about to explain the reason
when you interrupted me. Although your work has been perfectly
satisfactory, we feel that during the summer months----" He wrenched
himself away from that sentence entirely. "It is the wish of the
president," he said, "that you be given your salary to the first of
the month--which I hereby hand you--and be told that it will not be
necessary for you to come here after today. In parting with you, Miss
Leavitt, I wish to assure you that the quality of your work for this
organization has been in every respect----"
"I want to speak to the president," said Miss Leavitt.
She did not raise her voice, but no one could have mistaken that her
tone was threatening. She vibrated her head slightly from side to side,
and spit out her t's in a way actually alarming to Bunner, who was a
man susceptible to fear.
"Our decision is quite final--quite final, I'm sorry to say," he said,
fussing with his papers as a hint that she had better go and leave him
in peace.
"That's why I want to speak to him."
"Quite impossible," answered Bunner. "The board is meeting at present
in his room----"
"What!" cried Pearl. "They're all there together, are they?" And before
the office manager took in her intention she was out of his office,
across the main office and in the board room.
Like so many people destined to succeed in New York, Pearl came
originally from Ohio. She was an orphan, and after her graduation from
an Eastern college she had gone back to her native state, meaning to
make her home with her two aunts. It had not been a successful summer.
Not only was it hot, and there was no swimming where her aunts lived,
and Pearl loved to swim, but two of her cousins fell in love with
her--one from each family--and it became a question either of their
leaving home or of her going. So Pearl very gladly came East again, and
under the guidance of her great friend Augusta Exeter began to look for
a job.
She had come East in September, and it was now July--hardly ten
months--and yet in that time she had had and lost four good jobs
through no fault of her own but wholly on account of her extraordinary