Frances found it a curious experience. She wrote home to Minnie, after
the first week:
“I’m a sort of grandmother here in the business school. All the rest are
little girls with pigtails and hair ribbons, and little boys in short
trousers. You can imagine how I feel, so old and sedate. And even in
size! They’re all so stunted. I tower above my tiny desk. I’m taller
even than any of the teachers, and quite a different colour, at least
five degrees redder.
“I thought I knew something about typing, but I’ve had to start all over
again, and learn the ‘touch system.’ And shorthand! Oh, Minnie! I’m so
stupid, you can’t think. The others learn like eager little trained
animals. They can’t speak decently, or spell, of course, but what does
that matter? They can put down on paper what they hear someone say, and
copy it off, without the trouble of understanding. I foresee that I
shall be here for years while all the little boys and girls pass on and
out, and become bank presidents.”
It was quite true that she wasn’t quick at learning her new trade. She
was studious by nature, and painstaking, but her hand was not ready. She
was more discouraged than she cared to tell.
Life seemed, just then, a rather miserable affair. Her ambition was
balked by her slowness in learning, and she began to think that she
would never be able to do better than she was doing with Miss
Eppendorfer. A filler of odd jobs, employed principally because she was
personally agreeable.... And, somehow, Miss Eppendorfer’s talk of love
made her lonely and sad. She thought of her twenty-three years, and was
terrified by the fear that she would never be loved. She longed so to be
loved! What chance, though? She went from Miss Eppendorfer’s flat, which
no man entered but “Kurtie,” to the night school, where the oldest male
was perhaps nineteen.
A situation ripe for the coming of the hero. As usual he came. Or
perhaps, the one who came had to be he....
It was the end of June, and after two months of effort, Frankie still
sat among the beginners. She had developed a new trouble. She was able
now to scratch desperately while the teacher dictated, almost keeping
pace with her, but she could never afterward read what she had written.
She was trying in vain to type a letter she had taken down, in which all
she could distinguish was “Dear Sir:” and the “14th inst.” when she
heard someone sit down in the seat next her, which had till then been
vacant. Naturally she glanced up. It was, as she later wrote to Minnie,
a “real grown-up human being,” a tall, thin fellow with a haughty,
stupid face, a man who couldn’t be under thirty and who was dressed in
well-fitting and expensive clothes. She couldn’t help staring at him,
all the more because he took no notice of her at all. “He was so out of
place there,” she wrote. “He was so well-bred, with the nicest thin
brown hands. And, my dear Minnie, he was even stupider than me. Much
stupider.”
She watched him a great deal, as he tried to write on his machine. The
keyboard was hidden with a tin cover, so that he was obliged to learn
the letters by memory; this puzzled and annoyed him, and he frowned
severely over his chart.
“I say!” he said, suddenly, to Frances, with a marked English accent,
“Isn’t there something wrong about this thing? B ought to come next to
A.”
She explained that the keyboard wasn’t arranged alphabetically. He asked
why not, and she said she didn’t know.
“Some American idea, I suppose,” he observed, with displeasure, and
turned away to resume his struggle.
He was not polite, he was certainly not clever, and, in spite of limpid
and innocent grey eyes, not handsome; his nose was too large, his
expression too contemptuous. Why then should Frances think him so
terribly appealing and attractive? She felt an exaggerated good-will
toward him, an ardent wish to help him, even to comfort him. There was
no obvious reason for this painful compassion; he was well-dressed,
showed not the least trace of poverty, quite the contrary. He looked
healthy too, although very thin. And he had very much the air of being
satisfied with himself. Ridiculous girl!
He had come to the end of a line and not understanding the bell’s
signal, was trying to keep on writing. He saw that something was wrong,
and he turned to Frances again. She had been watching him, and was ready
to explain at once.
“I’ve never tried one of these infernal things before,” he remarked,
quite unnecessarily.
“I’ve been at it for two months,” said Frances, with a sigh, “but I
don’t seem to get on. Not like the others.”
He looked at her thoroughly for the first time.
“You’re _not_ like the others,” he said, “that’s probably why.”
And added:
“You look like an English girl.”
That meant that he was pleased, she knew.
“I’m not. I’m American--as far back as the Revolution.”
“What revolution?” he asked.
With the characteristic innocence of her country-people, whose Genesis
it is, she was astounded.
“Why, _our_ Revolution! In 1776!” she explained.
He said “Really!” and went on with his writing.
The next night he saluted her with a stiff “Good evening!” directly she
entered the room, so formal and frigid that her heart sank. They weren’t
friendly, then! But, after half an hour’s desperate effort, he grew
bored and discouraged, and once more turned his attention to the pretty
girl.
“You’re doing well,” he observed.
Frances gave a sigh and smiled at him.
“I hate it!” she said.
“Rather! But why do you do it?”
“I want to get on--get a better job.”
“What are you doing now?”
He was, she thought, very personal, but he didn’t seem aware of it.
“I’m a secretary, for an authoress.”
That seemed to interest him.
“I’d thought of something of that sort for myself,” he said. “What do
they expect of a secretary over here?”
“My position’s rather peculiar,” Frances told him. “I do all sorts of
things that aren’t really part of my duties.”
“What, for instance? Can’t you give me some sort of idea?” he persisted,
and, half-laughing, she tried to tell him.
“Oh, I go shopping with her,” she said, “and I listen while she reads,
and I get up little chafing-dish suppers, and answer the telephone, and
check up her bank book, and talk to her publishers, and--oh, well--lots
of things like that!”
“I shouldn’t call that a secretary,” said the young man. “At home we’d
call you a sort of companion.”
Frances turned red, and began typing again. He was rude, and no mistake
about it. Detestable! She worked violently for a time, then, out of the
corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of him, pecking away at his
typewriter so slowly and stupidly that her heart smote her.
“Good night!” she said cheerfully when the gong sounded, and she went
off to the dictation class and he to the beginner’s room, where she
could see him through the open door, writing on the arm of his chair,
surrounded by eager children.