The Priceless Pearl

								

"No," said Bunner, slightly misunderstanding his meaning. "She is
competent and industrious."
"She ought to get married, a pretty girl like that--not go about making
trouble in offices," said the president.
"I have always been of the opinion," said the third vice president,
"that it would be much simpler to run the office entirely with men."
"Oh, it would be much better--much better, of course," said Bunner;
"only women are so much more accurate about detail, more industrious
and less expensive."
And as there was no woman present to inquire why then men were so much
more desirable, the question dropped, and the president recalled the
board's attention to the subject of the paper to be used in their next
edition--the topic under consideration when Pearl made her entrance. It
was rather hard to take any interest in it now.
And so Pearl began once again to go the round of agencies, to interview
or be interviewed by office managers, and hear that if she came back
in October there might be a chance. But October was three months away,
and she could not live three months on something less than a hundred
dollars. She even began to scan the columns of the newspapers--from
clerks, through stenographers, ushers, and finally winders--she never
found out what winders were.
If her dear friend and sage adviser, Augusta Exeter, had been in town
she could have shared her room; but Augusta was in Vermont, visiting
the family of the man she was going to marry. At least, Augusta's last
letter had been from Vermont; but as a matter of fact, three days after
Pearl left the Encyclopedia's employ Augusta came back to New York.
She had had a letter from the agency where her name was registered
practically offering a position which sounded too good to refuse.
Besides, Augusta did not really like farm life in Vermont, and the
Baynes family, for some reason which she could not explain, gave her a
composite picture of Horace, her fiancé, which tended to make her love
him less. Even New York in midsummer was preferable.
Therefore it happened that as Pearl wandered, lonely as a cloud, from
office to office, longing for her friend's wisdom, Augusta herself was
sitting in the outer office of a company, looking for a job.
Though the office was that of the Finlay-Wood Engineering Co., the
position which Miss Augusta Exeter was considering was that of a
governess. She was not at all sure that she wanted the place. College
women are not well disposed toward positions as governesses; yet
as Miss Exeter sat there in the busy outer office and watched the
office boys coming in and out, and the impassive young woman at the
switchboard, enunciating again and again, "Finlay-Wood Company," "Hold
the wire," she went over the advantages of this offer--a high salary,
the two hottest months of the summer at Southampton, and the fact that
as she was to be married in October, she could not take a long-time