I saw Miss Clare going into Graves’s office, and I felt sorry for him. I
shouldn’t have enjoyed pointing out her faults to her. She was very
young and quite without affectation, but she had a natural and
altogether charming dignity about her. You couldn’t think of her as an
office worker; you were obliged to remember all the time that she was a
woman.
She came out after half an hour, looking downcast and grave. She smiled
at me, as she passed, with the air of a lady who never neglects her
social obligations, but I fancied her lips quivered a trifle.
“Poor girl!” I thought. “She’s out of place here. She hasn’t the stuff
in her for a competitive worker. She’ll never get on!”
I was so sympathetic to Graves that he told me the story of the
interview.
“The poor girl’s worried sick,” he said. “It seems she’s trying to
support her mother, and she’s so desperately afraid she won’t make good
that she can’t do her work. She does try, you know, and she’s fairly
accurate, but she’s slow, and she knows it. She said she’d never tried
to hurry before, and when she does, she gets nervous.” He paused, and
frowned a little. “Well,” he said, “it’s irregular, but I think it’ll
work. I’m going to let her come half an hour earlier than the other
girls and stay an hour later, so that she can finish her share of the
work.”
“That’s hard on her, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Not so hard as getting fired,” he answered. “She’s got a queer point of
view about that. She says that if she were discharged, she’d be so
discouraged that she’d--I think she said she’d go to pieces.”
“Lacks stamina,” I observed.
“Well,” said Graves, “there’s more than one sort of stamina. It takes
some grit for a girl brought up as she’s been to tackle the job of
supporting herself and her mother, I can tell you!”
I agreed with him, and said so, and he was delighted; but he paid
heavily for his kind-heartedness. Miss Kelly let the thing go on for one
week. Then, on Saturday morning, she appeared before him.
“Mr. Graves,” she said, “after due consideration, I have decided that
the only course for me is to leave this office. I shall remain, of
course, until you have filled my position to your satisfaction.”
She knew perfectly well how invaluable, how irreplaceable she was.
“Now, see here, Miss Kelly,” said Graves, as man to man. “This wants
talking about. Sit down and let’s discuss it frankly.”
She did sit down, and I thought she looked alarmingly frank.
“Certainly, Mr. Graves,” she said very pleasantly.
“Now, then, what’s the trouble? Not enough salary?”
“My salary is quite as much as the overhead permits,” said she. “In
proportion to the calculated profits, it is perfectly fair and adequate.
No, Mr. Graves--it’s a question of prestige and morale.”
Graves looked serious.
“My girls are constantly coming to me now with requests to be allowed to
finish their work at irregular and unauthorized hours, instead of
keeping up to the standard output required by my department. They assert
that a girl in Mr. Allen’s department was allowed to do this, and they
had never understood that employment in his department carried any
special privileges. I went to Mr. Allen about this. I pointed out to him
that it affected the morale of my girls to see one of his people
favored, but he told me he could do nothing. He said it was not his
idea, and--”
“All right!” said Graves, suddenly getting up, with a flushed face and a
constrained smile. “I--very likely you’re right, Miss Kelly. I’ll--I’ll
make some adjustment that’ll suit you.”
“Please don’t consider suiting _me_,” said Miss Kelly. “It’s the morale
of the office, Mr. Graves.”
And she went away like Pallas Athene from a battleground.