I
As an office worker Minnie was not so successful as Mr. Petersen had
anticipated. Not by any means. She tried; she was very earnest and, in a
way, painstaking, but it was extremely difficult to teach her anything.
Within a week Mr. Petersen was bitterly regretting Miss Layne, whom he
had ruthlessly, although generously, discharged. He was obliged to admit
that Minnie was not bright or quick, and neither was she accurate. She
learned to typewrite, but how badly! At figures she was hopeless. She
always made mistakes.
“But I know you’ll go over them,” she would say, in regard to her
crooked and erroneous columns. “You’re sure to find any mistakes there
are.”
He remembered Frances, her capability and intelligence. He asked after
her.
“She’s gone out to the Coast,” Minnie told him. “She’s settled out
there. I never hear from her.”
Evidently a serious breach. He regretted it; he thought what a help
Frances might be to her poor sister.
Somehow it distressed him to see the poor plump little soul working
away, poring over his books. He got Miss Layne back again, and she did
all the work that really mattered, and left the rest for her abhorred
colleague. She detested and despised and feared Minnie. She had seen at
once that the artful widow was sure to hoodwink Mr. Petersen.
He saw strange things going on, which amused while they troubled him. He
saw Minnie putting pencils and erasers and sheets and sheets of folded
paper into her coat pocket. For her child, no doubt: but though he
smiled at her maternal obsession, he was growing convinced that the
womanly woman is out of place in a business office....
Her conduct toward Miss Layne he could not admire. She was so
unnecessarily haughty, so frigid. And insisted so upon this being her
first experience of “work.”
“Of course _you’re_ used to it,” she would say, whenever she had made a
glaring mistake, “but _I’ve_ never been outside my own home before.”
She liked to bring her lunch with her, sandwiches and so on which the
hotel put up for her--as well as fruit and cake which she purloined from
the dinner table--and she made a great ceremony of spreading out a
little embroidered doily on the desk, on which to lay her food.
“I do love to make things a little bit dainty and homelike,” she told
Mr. Petersen. “You don’t mind, do you?”
But the doily was soon very far from dainty. Mr. Petersen thought he
would not care to eat anything that had lain on it. He felt sorrier than
ever for the poor little woman when he saw her sitting before it, so
daintily eating thick ham sandwiches, and adding new bits of butter and
strings of fat to her homelike tablecloth. In the course of time, the
rats ate it, lace and all, and she had nothing daintier than several
sheets of his best type-writing paper, fresh every day, on which to lay
out her repast.
It began to dawn upon her before very long that she was not altogether
indispensable; that Mr. Petersen and Miss Layne could manage the office
very well without her. So she began entreating them to teach her,
anything and everything. The books, especially. And, as she wrote a good
enough hand, and apparently took great pains, Mr. Petersen allowed her
to post certain items, providing she didn’t try to write in any of her
own totals. She enjoyed doing this; she used to ask Mr. Petersen for
“the books” as early in the morning as possible, because she liked to
see him open the safe and hand these precious volumes to her.
But she was detected in an awful deed. He _saw_ her, with his own eyes,
carefully tearing out one of the numbered pages.
“Mrs. Naylor!” he cried. “What are you doing?”
She looked up, blushing crimson.
“I was going to copy it all again,” she explained pitifully. “I hadn’t
written it very nicely. I didn’t have a proper pen. And I did take such
pride in having it all look nice!”
The books went back to Miss Layne again, while Mr. Petersen invented
tasks for Minnie.
She took her work with the utmost seriousness. One day Mr. Petersen
surprised her wiping away a surreptitious tear.
“Now, then!” he said kindly, “What’s the matter?”
She tried to answer cheerfully, but her voice failed.
“Sandra doesn’t seem well,” she said, “I don’t know--her throat----”
“But, my dear Mrs. Naylor, why didn’t you stay home? You mustn’t worry
yourself like this!”
“I didn’t want to neglect my work,” she said.
And she meant it; she had, in Minnie-fashion, made herself believe that
she was essential, that her absence would cause trouble. She _had_ to
believe this; her vanity would have suffered too cruelly otherwise.
Mr. Petersen assured her and reassured her, almost begged her to go
home, even appealed to Miss Layne, who answered, in what a tone, that
she _thought_ she could manage alone.
So Minnie put on her poor little coat and hat and hurried off to Mr.
Petersen’s house. She had never been in it before. Mrs. Hansen, the
housekeeper, observed her coming up the front steps with deep
misgivings. She knew her well by sight; had often seen her in the old
days, driving by with her sister, and even then had been inordinately
irritated.... The idea of Mr. Petersen, king of men, learned, just,
endowed with every virtue, forever picking his choicest flowers and
fruits for those “beggars,” as she called them! Living there all those
years without paying him a penny, and then, if you please, walking off
without so much as thank you! Ungrateful creatures, owing everyone, and
turning up their noses at honest people ten times better than
themselves. And this one was the worst of the lot.
However, with a manner absolutely correct, Mrs. Hansen opened the door,
and even smiled.
“I am Mrs. Naylor,” said Minnie, pleasantly.
“I know who _you_ are, and all about you!” thought Mrs. Hansen, though
aloud she said, “Yes, ma’am.” Although her husband was a Socialist, and
her revered Mr. Petersen as well, Mrs. Hansen had no patience with such
ideas. She knew herself to be a housekeeper, and as a housekeeper,
socially obliged to call this widow “ma’am.”
“I came for my little girl,” Minnie went on. “I felt worried about her
this morning. She didn’t seem well.”
Mrs. Hansen had her private opinion about the cause of the child’s
listlessness, which she had confided to her husband, but not, of course,
to Mr. Petersen, whom she looked upon as already lost.
“The child’s up till all hours of the night,” she said to Hansen, “and
eats all sorts of trash. What could you expect?”
“I think she’s better now,” she said to Minnie, “she’s taken two glasses
of milk.”
“You do take such wonderful care of her,” Minnie returned; “she tells me
at night of so many things you’ve done for her.”
“She’s a lovely, good child,” Mrs. Hansen answered, quite unmoved by the
flattery.
She led Minnie through a narrow red-carpeted passage into her kitchen,
pride and joy of her life, filled with sun and sweet air, utterly clean,
gleaming and neat. From the window she pointed out the quiet baby,
sitting on the back steps, leaning her head against a post, languid,
thoughtful, quite contented. Beside her sat an immense cat.
“Why!” cried Minnie. “That--can it _possibly_ be Michael?”
“Yes, ma’am, it’s your cat. Mr. Petersen took it after your sister
left.”
Minnie looked down with tears in her eyes at her long-lost darling,
sleek and fat still, but old; his buccaneer swagger gone, his insolent
eyes dim. She touched his head, with the furry skin so tightly drawn
over the round little skull; but he never stirred. He didn’t know her,
didn’t care for her.
Then she took Sandra by the hand and led her off, out of the fresh air
and the quiet garden, back to the hotel, where she got her into bed in
their hot little room and read to her, hovered over her, flooded her
with sympathy.
“You just needed Mother, didn’t you, baby?” she said. “Mother knows what
her little girl wants!”