Once they were outside, Percy turned into a shadowy side street that

was only partly built up, a dreary waste of derricks and foundation

holes, but comparatively solitary. Stella liked Percy's steady,

sympathetic silences; she was not a chatterbox herself. She often

wondered why she was going to marry Bixby instead of Charley

Greengay. She knew that Charley would go further in the world.

Indeed, she had often coolly told herself that Percy would never go

very far. But, as she admitted with a shrug, she was "weak to

Percy." In the capable New York stenographer, who estimated values

coldly and got the most for the least outlay, there was something

left that belonged to another kind of woman--something that liked

the very things in Percy that were not good business assets. However

much she dwelt upon the effectiveness of Greengay's dash and color

and assurance, her mind always came back to Percy's neat little

head, his clean-cut face, and warm, clear, gray eyes, and she liked

them better than Charley's fullness and blurred floridness. Having

reckoned up their respective chances with no doubtful result, she

opposed a mild obstinacy to her own good sense. "I guess I'll take

Percy, _anyway_," she said simply, and that was all the good her

clever business brain did her.

* * * * *

Percy spent a night of torment, lying tense on his bed in the dark,

and figuring out how long it would take him to pay back the money he

was advancing to himself. Any fool could do it in five years, he

reasoned, but he was going to do it in three. The trouble was that

his expensive courtship had taken every penny of his salary. With

competitors like Charley Greengay, you had to spend money or drop

out. Certain birds, he reflected ruefully, are supplied with more

attractive plumage when they are courting, but nature hadn't been so

thoughtful for men. When Percy reached the office in the morning he

climbed on his tall stool and leaned his arms on his ledger. He was

so glad to feel it there that he was faint and weak-kneed.

* * * * *

Oliver Remsen, Junior, had brought new blood into the Remsen Paper

Company. He married shortly after Percy Bixby did, and in the five

succeeding years he had considerably enlarged the company's business

and profits. He had been particularly successful in encouraging

efficiency and loyalty in the employees. From the time he came into

the office he had stood for shorter hours, longer holidays, and a

generous consideration of men's necessities. He came out of college

on the wave of economic reform, and he continued to read and think a

good deal about how the machinery of labor is operated. He knew more

about the men who worked for him than their mere office records.

Young Remsen was troubled about Percy Bixby because he took no

summer vacations--always asked for the two weeks' extra pay instead.

Other men in the office had skipped a vacation now and then, but

Percy had stuck to his desk for five years, had tottered to his

stool through attacks of grippe and tonsilitis. He seemed to have

grown fast to his ledger, and it was to this that Oliver objected.

He liked his men to stay men, to look like men and live like men. He

remembered how alert and wide-awake Bixby had seemed to him when he

himself first came into the office. He had picked Bixby out as the

most intelligent and interested of his father's employees, and since

then had often wondered why he never seemed to see chances to forge

ahead. Promotions, of course, went to the men who went after them.

When Percy's baby died, he went to the funeral, and asked Percy to

call on him if he needed money. Once when he chanced to sit down by

Bixby on the elevated and found him reading Bryce's "American

Commonwealth," he asked him to make use of his own large office

library. Percy thanked him, but he never came for any books. Oliver

wondered whether his bookkeeper really tried to avoid him.

One evening Oliver met the Bixbys in the lobby of a theater. He

introduced Mrs. Remsen to them, and held them for some moments in

conversation. When they got into their motor, Mrs. Remsen said:

"Is that little man afraid of you, Oliver? He looked like a scared

rabbit."

Oliver snapped the door, and said with a shade of irritation:

"I don't know what's the matter with him. He's the fellow I've told

you about who never takes a vacation. I half believe it's his wife.

She looks pitiless enough for anything."

"She's very pretty of her kind," mused Mrs. Remsen, "but rather

chilling. One can see that she has ideas about elegance."

"Rather unfortunate ones for a bookkeeper's wife. I surmise that

Percy felt she was overdressed, and that made him awkward with me.

I've always suspected that fellow of good taste."

After that, when Remsen passed the counting-room and saw Percy

screwed up over his ledger, he often remembered Mrs. Bixby, with her

cold, pale eyes and long lashes, and her expression that was

something between indifference and discontent. She rose behind

Percy's bent shoulders like an apparition.

One spring afternoon Remsen was closeted in his private office with

his lawyer until a late hour. As he came down the long hall in the

dusk he glanced through the glass partition into the counting-room,

and saw Percy Bixby huddled up on his tall stool, though it was too

dark to work. Indeed, Bixby's ledger was closed, and he sat with his

two arms resting on the brown cover. He did not move a muscle when

young Remsen entered.

"You are late, Bixby, and so am I," Oliver began genially as he

crossed to the front of the room and looked out at the lighted

windows of other tall buildings. "The fact is, I've been doing

something that men have a foolish way of putting off. I've been

making my will."

"Yes, sir." Percy brought it out with a deep breath.

"Glad to be through with it," Oliver went on. "Mr. Melton will bring

the paper back to-morrow, and I'd like to ask you to be one of the

witnesses."

"I'd be very proud, Mr. Remsen."

"Thank you, Bixby. Good night." Remsen took up his hat just as Percy

slid down from his stool.

"Mr. Remsen, I'm told you're going to have the books gone over."

"Why, yes, Bixby. Don't let that trouble you. I'm taking in a new

partner, you know, an old college friend. Just because he is a

friend, I insist upon all the usual formalities. But it is a

formality, and I'll guarantee the expert won't make a scratch on

your books. Good night. You'd better be coming, too." Remsen had

reached the door when he heard "Mr. Remsen!" in a desperate voice

behind him. He turned, and saw Bixby standing uncertainly at one end

of the desk, his hand still on his ledger, his uneven shoulders

drooping forward and his head hanging as if he were seasick. Remsen

came back and stood at the other end of the long desk. It was too

dark to see Bixby's face clearly.

"What is it, Bixby?"

"Mr. Remsen, five years ago, just before I was married, I falsified

the books a thousand dollars, and I used the money." Percy leaned

forward against his desk, which took him just across the chest.

"What's that, Bixby?" Young Remsen spoke in a tone of polite

surprise. He felt painfully embarrassed.

"Yes, sir. I thought I'd get it all paid back before this. I've put

back three hundred, but the books are still seven hundred out of

true. I've played the shortages about from account to account these

five years, but an expert would find 'em in twenty-four hours."

"I don't just understand how--" Oliver stopped and shook his head.

"I held it out of the Western remittances, Mr. Remsen. They were

coming in heavy just then. I was up against it. I hadn't saved

anything to marry on, and my wife thought I was getting more money

than I was. Since we've been married, I've never had the nerve to

tell her. I could have paid it all back if it hadn't been for the

unforeseen expenses."

Remsen sighed.

"Being married is largely unforeseen expenses, Percy. There's only

one way to fix this up: I'll give you seven hundred dollars in cash

to-morrow, and you can give me your personal note, with the

understanding that I hold ten dollars a week out of your pay-check

until it is paid. I think you ought to tell your wife exactly how

you are fixed, though. You can't expect her to help you much when

she doesn't know."

* * * * *

That night Mrs. Bixby was sitting in their flat, waiting for her

husband. She was dressed for a bridge party, and often looked with

impatience from her paper to the Mission clock, as big as a coffin

and with nothing but two weights dangling in its hollow framework.

Percy had been loath to buy the clock when they got their furniture,

and he had hated it ever since. Stella had changed very little since

she came into the flat a bride. Then she wore her hair in a

Floradora pompadour; now she wore it hooded close about her head

like a scarf, in a rather smeary manner, like an Impressionist's

brush-work. She heard her husband come in and close the door softly.

While he was taking off his hat in the narrow tunnel of a hall, she

called to him:

"I hope you've had something to eat down-town. You'll have to dress

right away." Percy came in and sat down. She looked up from the

evening paper she was reading. "You've no time to sit down. We must

start in fifteen minutes."

He shaded his eyes from the glaring overhead light.

"I'm afraid I can't go anywhere to-night. I'm all in."

Mrs. Bixby rattled her paper, and turned from the theatrical page to

the fashions.

"You'll feel better after you dress. We won't stay late."

Her even persistence usually conquered her husband. She never forgot

anything she had once decided to do. Her manner of following it up

grew more chilly, but never weaker. To-night there was no spring in

Percy. He closed his eyes and replied without moving:

"I can't go. You had better telephone the Burks we aren't coming. I

have to tell you something disagreeable."

Stella rose.

"I certainly am not going to disappoint the Burks and stay at home

to talk about anything disagreeable."

"You're not very sympathetic, Stella."

She turned away.

"If I were, you'd soon settle down into a pretty dull proposition.

We'd have no social life now if I didn't keep at you."

Percy roused himself a little.

"Social life? Well, we'll have to trim that pretty close for a

while. I'm in debt to the company. We've been living beyond our

means ever since we were married."

"We can't live on less than we do," Stella said quietly. "No use in

taking that up again."

Percy sat up, clutching the arms of his chair.

"We'll have to take it up. I'm seven hundred dollars short, and the

books are to be audited to-morrow. I told young Remsen and he's

going to take my note and hold the money out of my pay-checks. He

could send me to jail, of course."

Stella turned and looked down at him with a gleam of interest.

"Oh, you've been playing solitaire with the books, have you? And

he's found you out! I hope I'll never see that man again. Sugar

face!" She said this with intense acrimony. Her forehead flushed

delicately, and her eyes were full of hate. Young Remsen was not her

idea of a "business man."

Stella went into the other room. When she came back she wore her

evening coat and carried long gloves and a black scarf. This she

began to arrange over her hair before the mirror above the false

fireplace. Percy lay inert in the Morris chair and watched her. Yes,

he understood; it was very difficult for a woman with hair like that

to be shabby and to go without things. Her hair made her

conspicuous, and it had to be lived up to. It had been the deciding

factor in his fate.

Stella caught the lace over one ear with a large gold hairpin. She

repeated this until she got a good effect. Then turning to Percy,

she began to draw on her gloves.

"I'm not worrying any, because I'm going back into business," she

said firmly. "I meant to, anyway, if you didn't get a raise the

first of the year. I have the offer of a good position, and we can

live in an apartment hotel."

Percy was on his feet in an instant.

"I won't have you grinding in any office. That's flat."

Stella's lower lip quivered in a commiserating smile. "Oh, I won't

lose my health. Charley Greengay's a partner in his concern now, and

he wants a private secretary."

Percy drew back.

"You can't work for Greengay. He's got too bad a reputation. You've

more pride than that, Stella."

The thin sweep of color he knew so well went over Stella's face.

"His business reputation seems to be all right," she commented,

working the kid on with her left hand.

"What if it is?" Percy broke out. "He's the cheapest kind of a

skate. He gets into scrapes with the girls in his own office. The

last one got into the newspapers, and he had to pay the girl a wad."

"He don't get into scrapes with his books, anyway, and he seems to

be able to stand getting into the papers. I excuse Charley. His

wife's a pill."

"I suppose you think he'd have been all right if he'd married you,"

said Percy, bitterly.

"Yes, I do." Stella buttoned her glove with an air of finishing

something, and then looked at Percy without animosity. "Charley and

I both have sporty tastes, and we like excitement. You might as well

live in Newark if you're going to sit at home in the evening. You

oughtn't to have married a business woman; you need somebody

domestic. There's nothing in this sort of life for either of us."

"That means, I suppose, that you're going around with Greengay and

his crowd?"

"Yes, that's my sort of crowd, and you never did fit into it. You're

too intellectual. I've always been proud of you, Percy. You're

better style than Charley, but that gets tiresome. You will never

burn much red fire in New York, now, will you?"

Percy did not reply. He sat looking at the minute-hand of the

eviscerated Mission clock. His wife almost never took the trouble to

argue with him.

"You're old style, Percy," she went on. "Of course everybody marries

and wishes they hadn't, but nowadays people get over it. Some women

go ahead on the quiet, but I'm giving it to you straight. I'm going

to work for Greengay. I like his line of business, and I meet people

well. Now I'm going to the Burks'."

Percy dropped his hands limply between his knees.

"I suppose," he brought out, "the real trouble is that you've

decided my earning power is not very great."

"That's part of it, and part of it is you're old-fashioned." Stella

paused at the door and looked back. "What made you rush me, anyway,

Percy?" she asked indulgently. "What did you go and pretend to be a

spender and get tied up with me for?"

"I guess everybody wants to be a spender when he's in love," Percy

replied.

Stella shook her head mournfully.

"No, you're a spender or you're not. Greengay has been broke three

times, fired, down and out, black-listed. But he's always come back,

and he always will. You will never be fired, but you'll always be

poor." She turned and looked back again before she went out.

* * * * *

Six months later Bixby came to young Oliver Remsen one afternoon and

said he would like to have twenty dollars a week held out of his pay

until his debt was cleared off.

Oliver looked up at his sallow employee and asked him how he could

spare as much as that.

"My expenses are lighter," Bixby replied. "My wife has gone into

business with a ready-to-wear firm. She is not living with me any

more."

Oliver looked annoyed, and asked him if nothing could be done to

readjust his domestic affairs. Bixby said no; they would probably

remain as they were.

"But where are you living, Bixby? How have you arranged things?" the

young man asked impatiently.

"I'm very comfortable. I live in a boarding-house and have my own

furniture. There are several fellows there who are fixed the same

way. Their wives went back into business, and they drifted apart."

With a baffled expression Remsen stared at the uneven shoulders

under the skin-fitting alpaca desk coat as his bookkeeper went out.

He had meant to do something for Percy, but somehow, he reflected,

one never did do anything for a fellow who had been stung as hard as

that.

_Century_, May 1916

_Ardessa_

The grand-mannered old man who sat at a desk in the reception-room

of "The Outcry" offices to receive visitors and incidentally to keep

the time-book of the employees, looked up as Miss Devine entered at

ten minutes past ten and condescendingly wished him good morning. He

bowed profoundly as she minced past his desk, and with an

indifferent air took her course down the corridor that led to the

editorial offices. Mechanically he opened the flat, black book at

his elbow and placed his finger on D, running his eye along the line

of figures after the name Devine. "It's banker's hours she keeps,

indeed," he muttered. What was the use of entering so capricious a

record? Nevertheless, with his usual preliminary flourish he wrote

10:10 under this, the fourth day of May.

The employee who kept banker's hours rustled on down the corridor to

her private room, hung up her lavender jacket and her trim spring

hat, and readjusted her side combs by the mirror inside her closet

door. Glancing at her desk, she rang for an office boy, and reproved

him because he had not dusted more carefully and because there were

lumps in her paste. When he disappeared with the paste-jar, she sat

down to decide which of her employer's letters he should see and

which he should not.

Ardessa was not young and she was certainly not handsome. The

coquettish angle at which she carried her head was a mannerism

surviving from a time when it was more becoming. She shuddered at

the cold candor of the new business woman, and was insinuatingly

feminine.

Ardessa's employer, like young Lochinvar, had come out of the West,

and he had done a great many contradictory things before he became

proprietor and editor of "The Outcry." Before he decided to go to

New York and make the East take notice of him, O'Mally had acquired

a punctual, reliable silver-mine in South Dakota. This silent friend

in the background made his journalistic success comparatively easy.

He had figured out, when he was a rich nobody in Nevada, that the

quickest way to cut into the known world was through the

printing-press. He arrived in New York, bought a highly respectable

publication, and turned it into a red-hot magazine of protest, which

he called "The Outcry." He knew what the West wanted, and it proved

to be what everybody secretly wanted. In six years he had done the

thing that had hitherto seemed impossible: built up a national

weekly, out on the news-stands the same day in New York and San

Francisco; a magazine the people howled for, a moving-picture film

of their real tastes and interests.

O'Mally bought "The Outcry" to make a stir, not to make a career,

but he had got built into the thing more than he ever intended. It

had made him a public man and put him into politics. He found the

publicity game diverting, and it held him longer than any other game

had ever done. He had built up about him an organization of which he

was somewhat afraid and with which he was vastly bored. On his staff

there were five famous men, and he had made every one of them. At

first it amused him to manufacture celebrities. He found he could

take an average reporter from the daily press, give him a "line" to

follow, a trust to fight, a vice to expose,--this was all in that

good time when people were eager to read about their own

wickedness,--and in two years the reporter would be recognized as an

authority. Other people--Napoleon, Disraeli, Sarah Bernhardt--had

discovered that advertising would go a long way; but Marcus O'Mally

discovered that in America it would go all the way--as far as you

wished to pay its passage. Any human countenance, plastered in

three-sheet posters from sea to sea, would be revered by the

American people. The strangest thing was that the owners of these

grave countenances, staring at their own faces on newsstands and

billboards, fell to venerating themselves; and even he, O'Mally, was

more or less constrained by these reputations that he had created

out of cheap paper and cheap ink.

Constraint was the last thing O'Mally liked. The most engaging and

unusual thing about the man was that he couldn't be fooled by the

success of his own methods, and no amount of "recognition" could

make a stuffed shirt of him. No matter how much he was advertised as

a great medicine-man in the councils of the nation, he knew that he

was a born gambler and a soldier of fortune. He left his dignified

office to take care of itself for a good many months of the year

while he played about on the outskirts of social order. He liked

being a great man from the East in rough-and-tumble Western cities

where he had once been merely an unconsidered spender.

O'Mally's long absences constituted one of the supreme advantages of

Ardessa Devine's position. When he was at his post her duties were

not heavy, but when he was giving balls in Goldfield, Nevada, she

lived an ideal life. She came to the office every day, indeed, to

forward such of O'Mally's letters as she thought best, to attend to

his club notices and tradesmen's bills, and to taste the sense of

her high connections. The great men of the staff were all about her,

as contemplative as Buddhas in their private offices, each

meditating upon the particular trust or form of vice confided to his

care. Thus surrounded, Ardessa had a pleasant sense of being at the

heart of things. It was like a mental massage, exercise without

exertion. She read and she embroidered. Her room was pleasant, and

she liked to be seen at ladylike tasks and to feel herself a

graceful contrast to the crude girls in the advertising and

circulation departments across the hall. The younger stenographers,

who had to get through with the enormous office correspondence, and

who rushed about from one editor to another with wire baskets full

of letters, made faces as they passed Ardessa's door and saw her

cool and cloistered, daintily plying her needle. But no matter how

hard the other stenographers were driven, no one, not even one of

the five oracles of the staff, dared dictate so much as a letter to

Ardessa. Like a sultan's bride, she was inviolate in her lord's

absence; she had to be kept for him.

Naturally the other young women employed in "The Outcry" offices

disliked Miss Devine. They were all competent girls, trained in the

exacting methods of modern business, and they had to make good every

day in the week, had to get through with a great deal of work or

lose their position. O'Mally's private secretary was a mystery to

them. Her exemptions and privileges, her patronizing remarks, formed

an exhaustless subject of conversation at the lunch-hour. Ardessa

had, indeed, as they knew she must have, a kind of "purchase" on her

employer.

When O'Mally first came to New York to break into publicity, he

engaged Miss Devine upon the recommendation of the editor whose

ailing publication he bought and rechristened. That editor was a

conservative, scholarly gentleman of the old school, who was

retiring because he felt out of place in the world of brighter,

breezier magazines that had been flowering since the new century

came in. He believed that in this vehement world young O'Mally would

make himself heard and that Miss Devine's training in an editorial

office would be of use to him.

When O'Mally first sat down at a desk to be an editor, all the cards

that were brought in looked pretty much alike to him. Ardessa was at

his elbow. She had long been steeped in literary distinctions and in

the social distinctions which used to count for much more than they

do now. She knew all the great men, all the nephews and clients of

great men. She knew which must be seen, which must be made welcome,

and which could safely be sent away. She could give O'Mally on the

instant the former rating in magazine offices of nearly every name

that was brought in to him. She could give him an idea of the man's

connections, of the price his work commanded, and insinuate whether

he ought to be met with the old punctiliousness or with the new

joviality. She was useful in explaining to her employer the

significance of various invitations, and the standing of clubs and

associations. At first she was virtually the social mentor of the

bullet-headed young Westerner who wanted to break into everything,

the solitary person about the office of the humming new magazine who

knew anything about the editorial traditions of the eighties and

nineties which, antiquated as they now were, gave an editor, as

O'Mally said, a background.

Despite her indolence, Ardessa was useful to O'Mally as a social

reminder. She was the card catalogue of his ever-changing personal

relations. O'Mally went in for everything and got tired of

everything; that was why he made a good editor. After he was through

with people, Ardessa was very skilful in covering his retreat. She

read and answered the letters of admirers who had begun to bore him.

When great authors, who had been dined and fêted the month before,

were suddenly left to cool their heels in the reception-room, thrown

upon the suave hospitality of the grand old man at the desk, it was

Ardessa who went out and made soothing and plausible explanations as

to why the editor could not see them. She was the brake that checked

the too-eager neophyte, the emollient that eased the severing of

relationships, the gentle extinguisher of the lights that failed.

When there were no longer messages of hope and cheer to be sent to

ardent young writers and reformers, Ardessa delivered, as sweetly as

possible, whatever messages were left.

In handling these people with whom O'Mally was quite through,

Ardessa had gradually developed an industry which was immensely

gratifying to her own vanity. Not only did she not crush them; she

even fostered them a little. She continued to advise them in the

reception-room and "personally" received their manuscripts long

after O'Mally had declared that he would never read another line

they wrote. She let them outline their plans for stories and

articles to her, promising to bring these suggestions to the

editor's attention. She denied herself to nobody, was gracious even

to the Shakspere-Bacon man, the perpetual-motion man, the

travel-article man, the ghosts which haunt every magazine office.

The writers who had had their happy hour of O'Mally's favor kept

feeling that Ardessa might reinstate them. She answered their

letters of inquiry in her most polished and elegant style, and even

gave them hints as to the subjects in which the restless editor was

or was not interested at the moment: she feared it would be useless

to send him an article on "How to Trap Lions," because he had just

bought an article on "Elephant-Shooting in Majuba Land," etc.

So when O'Mally plunged into his office at 11:30 on this, the fourth

day of May, having just got back from three-days' fishing, he found

Ardessa in the reception-room, surrounded by a little court of

discards. This was annoying, for he always wanted his stenographer

at once. Telling the office boy to give her a hint that she was

needed, he threw off his hat and topcoat and began to race through

the pile of letters Ardessa had put on his desk. When she entered,

he did not wait for her polite inquiries about his trip, but broke

in at once.

"What is that fellow who writes about phossy jaw still hanging round

here for? I don't want any articles on phossy jaw, and if I did, I

wouldn't want his."

"He has just sold an article on the match industry to 'The New Age,'

Mr. O'Mally," Ardessa replied as she took her seat at the editor's

right.

"Why does he have to come and tell us about it? We've nothing to do

with 'The New Age.' And that prison-reform guy, what's he loafing

about for?"

Ardessa bridled.

"You remember, Mr. O'Mally, he brought letters of introduction from

Governor Harper, the reform Governor of Mississippi."

O'Mally jumped up, kicking over his waste-basket in his impatience.

"That was months ago. I went through his letters and went through him,

too. He hasn't got anything we want. I've been through with Governor

Harper a long while. We're asleep at the switch in here. And let me

tell you, if I catch sight of that causes-of-blindness-in-babies

woman around here again, I'll do something violent. Clear them out,

Miss Devine! Clear them out! We need a traffic policeman in this

office. Have you got that article on 'Stealing Our National Water

Power' ready for me?"

"Mr. Gerrard took it back to make modifications. He gave it to me at

noon on Saturday, just before the office closed. I will have it

ready for you to-morrow morning, Mr. O'Mally, if you have not too

many letters for me this afternoon," Ardessa replied pointedly.

"Holy Mike!" muttered O'Mally, "we need a traffic policeman for the

staff, too. Gerrard's modified that thing half a dozen times

already. Why don't they get accurate information in the first

place?"

He began to dictate his morning mail, walking briskly up and down

the floor by way of giving his stenographer an energetic example.

Her indolence and her ladylike deportment weighed on him. He wanted

to take her by the elbows and run her around the block. He didn't

mind that she loafed when he was away, but it was becoming harder

and harder to speed her up when he was on the spot. He knew his

correspondence was not enough to keep her busy, so when he was in

town he made her type his own breezy editorials and various articles

by members of his staff.

Transcribing editorial copy is always laborious, and the only way to

make it easy is to farm it out. This Ardessa was usually clever

enough to do. When she returned to her own room after O'Mally had

gone out to lunch, Ardessa rang for an office boy and said

languidly, "James, call Becky, please."

In a moment a thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteen

came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets.

She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy

clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were

running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While

Miss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her

shoulders drawn up and her elbows drawn in, apparently trying to

hide herself in her insufficient open-work waist. Her wild, black

eyes followed Miss Devine's hands desperately. Ardessa sighed.

"This seems to be very smeary copy again, Becky. You don't keep your

mind on your work, and so you have to erase continually."

Becky spoke up in wailing self-vindication.

"It ain't that, Miss Devine. It's so many hard words he uses that I

have to be at the dictionary all the time. Look! Look!" She produced

a bunch of manuscript faintly scrawled in pencil, and thrust it

under Ardessa's eyes. "He don't write out the words at all. He just

begins a word, and then makes waves for you to guess."

"I see you haven't always guessed correctly, Becky," said Ardessa,

with a weary smile. "There are a great many words here that would

surprise Mr. Gerrard, I am afraid."

"And the inserts," Becky persisted. "How is anybody to tell where

they go, Miss Devine? It's mostly inserts; see, all over the top and

sides and back."

Ardessa turned her head away.

"Don't claw the pages like that, Becky. You make me nervous. Mr.

Gerrard has not time to dot his i's and cross his t's. That is what

we keep copyists for. I will correct these sheets for you,--it would

be terrible if Mr. O'Mally saw them,--and then you can copy them

over again. It must be done by to-morrow morning, so you may have to

work late. See that your hands are clean and dry, and then you will

not smear it."

"Yes, ma'am. Thank you, Miss Devine. Will you tell the janitor,

please, it's all right if I have to stay? He was cross because I was

here Saturday afternoon doing this. He said it was a holiday, and

when everybody else was gone I ought to--"

"That will do, Becky. Yes, I will speak to the janitor for you. You

may go to lunch now."

Becky turned on one heel and then swung back.

"Miss Devine," she said anxiously, "will it be all right if I get

white shoes for now?"

Ardessa gave her kind consideration.

"For office wear, you mean? No, Becky. With only one pair, you could

not keep them properly clean; and black shoes are much less

conspicuous. Tan, if you prefer."

Becky looked down at her feet. They were too large, and her skirt

was as much too short as her legs were too long.

"Nearly all the girls I know wear white shoes to business," she

pleaded.

"They are probably little girls who work in factories or department

stores, and that is quite another matter. Since you raise the

question, Becky, I ought to speak to you about your new waist. Don't

wear it to the office again, please. Those cheap open-work waists

are not appropriate in an office like this. They are all very well

for little chorus girls."

"But Miss Kalski wears expensive waists to business more open than

this, and jewelry--"

Ardessa interrupted. Her face grew hard.

"Miss Kalski," she said coldly, "works for the business department.

You are employed in the editorial offices. There is a great

difference. You see, Becky, I might have to call you in here at any

time when a scientist or a great writer or the president of a

university is here talking over editorial matters, and such clothes

as you have on to-day would make a bad impression. Nearly all our

connections are with important people of that kind, and we ought to

be well, but quietly, dressed."

"Yes, Miss Devine. Thank you," Becky gasped and disappeared. Heaven

knew she had no need to be further impressed with the greatness of

"The Outcry" office. During the year and a half she had been there

she had never ceased to tremble. She knew the prices all the authors

got as well as Miss Devine did, and everything seemed to her to be

done on a magnificent scale. She hadn't a good memory for long

technical words, but she never forgot dates or prices or initials or

telephone numbers.

Becky felt that her job depended on Miss Devine, and she was so glad

to have it that she scarcely realized she was being bullied.

Besides, she was grateful for all that she had learned from Ardessa;

Ardessa had taught her to do most of the things that she was

supposed to do herself. Becky wanted to learn, she had to learn;

that was the train she was always running for. Her father, Isaac

Tietelbaum, the tailor, who pressed Miss Devine's skirts and kept

her ladylike suits in order, had come to his client two years ago

and told her he had a bright girl just out of a commercial high

school. He implored Ardessa to find some office position for his

daughter. Ardessa told an appealing story to O'Mally, and brought

Becky into the office, at a salary of six dollars a week, to help

with the copying and to learn business routine. When Becky first

came she was as ignorant as a young savage. She was rapid at her

shorthand and typing, but a Kafir girl would have known as much

about the English language. Nobody ever wanted to learn more than

Becky. She fairly wore the dictionary out. She dug up her old school

grammar and worked over it at night. She faithfully mastered Miss

Devine's fussy system of punctuation.

There were eight children at home, younger than Becky, and they were

all eager to learn. They wanted to get their mother out of the three

dark rooms behind the tailor shop and to move into a flat up-stairs,

where they could, as Becky said, "live private." The young

Tietelbaums doubted their father's ability to bring this change

about, for the more things he declared himself ready to do in his

window placards, the fewer were brought to him to be done. "Dyeing,

Cleaning, Ladies' Furs Remodeled"--it did no good.

Rebecca was out to "improve herself," as her father had told her she

must. Ardessa had easy way with her. It was one of those rare

relationships from which both persons profit. The more Becky could

learn from Ardessa, the happier she was; and the more Ardessa could

unload on Becky, the greater was her contentment. She easily broke

Becky of the gum-chewing habit, taught her to walk quietly, to

efface herself at the proper moment, and to hold her tongue. Becky

had been raised to eight dollars a week; but she didn't care half so

much about that as she did about her own increasing efficiency. The

more work Miss Devine handed over to her the happier she was, and

the faster she was able to eat it up. She tested and tried herself

in every possible way. She now had full confidence that she would

surely one day be a high-priced stenographer, a real "business

woman."

Becky would have corrupted a really industrious person, but a

bilious temperament like Ardessa's couldn't make even a feeble stand

against such willingness. Ardessa had grown soft and had lost the

knack of turning out work. Sometimes, in her importance and

serenity, she shivered. What if O'Mally should die, and she were

thrust out into the world to work in competition with the brazen,

competent young women she saw about her everywhere? She believed

herself indispensable, but she knew that in such a mischanceful

world as this the very powers of darkness might rise to separate her

from this pearl among jobs.

When Becky came in from lunch she went down the long hall to the

wash-room, where all the little girls who worked in the advertising

and circulation departments kept their hats and jackets. There were

shelves and shelves of bright spring hats, piled on top of one

another, all as stiff as sheet-iron and trimmed with gay flowers. At

the marble wash-stand stood Rena Kalski, the right bower of the

business manager, polishing her diamond rings with a nail-brush.

"Hullo, kid," she called over her shoulder to Becky. "I've got a

ticket for you for Thursday afternoon."

Becky's black eyes glowed, but the strained look on her face drew

tighter than ever.

"I'll never ask her, Miss Kalski," she said rapidly. "I don't dare.

I have to stay late to-night again; and I know she'd be hard to

please after, if I was to try to get off on a week-day. I thank you,

Miss Kalski, but I'd better not."

Miss Kalski laughed. She was a slender young Hebrew, handsome in an

impudent, Tenderloin sort of way, with a small head, reddish-brown

almond eyes, a trifle tilted, a rapacious mouth, and a beautiful

chin.

"Ain't you under that woman's thumb, though! Call her bluff. She

isn't half the prima donna she thinks she is. On my side of the hall

we know who's who about this place."

The business and editorial departments of "The Outcry" were

separated by a long corridor and a great contempt. Miss Kalski dried

her rings with tissue-paper and studied them with an appraising eye.

"Well, since you're such a 'fraidy-calf,'" she went on, "maybe I can

get a rise out of her myself. Now I've got you a ticket out of that

shirt-front, I want you to go. I'll drop in on Devine this

afternoon."

When Miss Kalski went back to her desk in the business manager's

private office, she turned to him familiarly, but not impertinently.

"Mr. Henderson, I want to send a kid over in the editorial

stenographers' to the Palace Thursday afternoon. She's a nice kid,

only she's scared out of her skin all the time. Miss Devine's her

boss, and she'll be just mean enough not to let the young one off.

Would you say a word to her?"

The business manager lit a cigar.

"I'm not saying words to any of the high-brows over there. Try it

out with Devine yourself. You're not bashful."

Miss Kalski shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

"Oh, very well." She serpentined out of the room and crossed the

Rubicon into the editorial offices. She found Ardessa typing

O'Mally's letters and wearing a pained expression.

"Good afternoon, Miss Devine," she said carelessly. "Can we borrow

Becky over there for Thursday afternoon? We're short."

Miss Devine looked piqued and tilted her head.

"I don't think it's customary, Miss Kalski, for the business

department to use our people. We never have girls enough here to do

the work. Of course if Mr. Henderson feels justified--"

"Thanks awfully, Miss Devine,"--Miss Kalski interrupted her with the

perfectly smooth, good-natured tone which never betrayed a hint of

the scorn every line of her sinuous figure expressed,--"I will tell

Mr. Henderson. Perhaps we can do something for you some day."

Whether this was a threat, a kind wish, or an insinuation, no mortal

could have told. Miss Kalski's face was always suggesting insolence

without being quite insolent. As she returned to her own domain she

met the cashier's head clerk in the hall. "That Devine woman's a

crime," she murmured. The head clerk laughed tolerantly.

That afternoon as Miss Kalski was leaving the office at 5:15, on her

way down the corridor she heard a typewriter clicking away in the

empty, echoing editorial offices. She looked in, and found Becky

bending forward over the machine as if she were about to swallow it.

"Hello, kid. Do you sleep with that?" she called. She walked up to

Becky and glanced at her copy. "What do you let 'em keep you up

nights over that stuff for?" she asked contemptuously. "The world

wouldn't suffer if that stuff never got printed."

Rebecca looked up wildly. Not even Miss Kalski's French pansy hat or

her ear-rings and landscape veil could loosen Becky's tenacious mind

from Mr. Gerrard's article on water power. She scarcely knew what

Miss Kalski had said to her, certainly not what she meant.

"But I must make progress already, Miss Kalski," she panted.

Miss Kalski gave her low, siren laugh.

"I should say you must!" she ejaculated.

* * * * *

Ardessa decided to take her vacation in June, and she arranged that

Miss Milligan should do O'Mally's work while she was away. Miss

Milligan was blunt and noisy, rapid and inaccurate. It would be just

as well for O'Mally to work with a coarse instrument for a time; he

would be more appreciative, perhaps, of certain qualities to which

he had seemed insensible of late. Ardessa was to leave for East

Hampton on Sunday, and she spent Saturday morning instructing her

substitute as to the state of the correspondence. At noon O'Mally

burst into her room. All the morning he had been closeted with a new

writer of mystery-stories just over from England.

"Can you stay and take my letters this afternoon, Miss Devine? You

're not leaving until to-morrow."

Ardessa pouted, and tilted her head at the angle he was tired of.

"I'm sorry, Mr. O'Mally, but I've left all my shopping for this

afternoon. I think Becky Tietelbaum could do them for you. I will

tell her to be careful."

"Oh, all right." O'Mally bounced out with a reflection of Ardessa's

disdainful expression on his face. Saturday afternoon was always a

half-holiday, to be sure, but since she had weeks of freedom when he

was away--However--

At two o'clock Becky Tietelbaum appeared at his door, clad in the

sober office suit which Miss Devine insisted she should wear, her

note-book in her hand, and so frightened that her fingers were cold

and her lips were pale. She had never taken dictation from the

editor before. It was a great and terrifying occasion.

"Sit down," he said encouragingly. He began dictating while he shook

from his bag the manuscripts he had snatched away from the amazed

English author that morning. Presently he looked up.

"Do I go too fast?"

"No, sir," Becky found strength to say.

At the end of an hour he told her to go and type as many of the

letters as she could while he went over the bunch of stuff he had

torn from the Englishman. He was with the Hindu detective in an

opium den in Shanghai when Becky returned and placed a pile of

papers on his desk.

"How many?" he asked, without looking up.

"All you gave me, sir."

"All, so soon? Wait a minute and let me see how many mistakes." He

went over the letters rapidly, signing them as he read. "They seem

to be all right. I thought you were the girl that made so many

mistakes."

Rebecca was never too frightened to vindicate herself.

"Mr. O'Mally, sir, I don't make mistakes with letters. It's only

copying the articles that have so many long words, and when the

writing isn't plain, like Mr. Gerrard's. I never make many mistakes

with Mr. Johnson's articles, or with yours I don't."

O'Mally wheeled round in his chair, looked with curiosity at her

long, tense face, her black eyes, and straight brows.

"Oh, so you sometimes copy articles, do you? How does that happen?"

"Yes, sir. Always Miss Devine gives me the articles to do. It's good

practice for me."

"I see." O'Mally shrugged his shoulders. He was thinking that he

could get a rise out of the whole American public any day easier

than he could get a rise out of Ardessa. "What editorials of mine

have you copied lately, for instance?"

Rebecca blazed out at him, reciting rapidly:

"Oh, 'A Word about the Rosenbaums,' 'Useless Navy-Yards,' 'Who

Killed Cock Robin'--"

"Wait a minute." O'Mally checked her flow. "What was that one

about--Cock Robin?"

"It was all about why the secretary of the interior dismissed--"

"All right, all right. Copy those letters, and put them down the

chute as you go out. Come in here for a minute on Monday morning."

Becky hurried home to tell her father that she had taken the

editor's letters and had made no mistakes. On Monday she learned

that she was to do O'Mally's work for a few days. He disliked Miss

Milligan, and he was annoyed with Ardessa for trying to put her over

on him when there was better material at hand. With Rebecca he got

on very well; she was impersonal, unreproachful, and she fairly

panted for work. Everything was done almost before he told her what

he wanted. She raced ahead with him; it was like riding a good

modern bicycle after pumping along on an old hard tire.

On the day before Miss Devine's return O'Mally strolled over for a

chat with the business office.

"Henderson, your people are taking vacations now, I suppose? Could

you use an extra girl?"

"If it's that thin black one, I can."

O'Mally gave him a wise smile.

"It isn't. To be honest, I want to put one over on you. I want you

to take Miss Devine over here for a while and speed her up. I can't

do anything. She's got the upper hand of me. I don't want to fire

her, you understand, but she makes my life too difficult. It's my

fault, of course. I've pampered her. Give her a chance over here;

maybe she'll come back. You can be firm with 'em, can't you?"

Henderson glanced toward the desk where Miss Kalski's lightning eye

was skimming over the printing-house bills that he was supposed to

verify himself.

"Well, if I can't, I know who can," he replied, with a chuckle.

"Exactly," O'Mally agreed. "I'm counting on the force of Miss

Kalski's example. Miss Devine's all right, Miss Kalski, but she

needs regular exercise. She owes it to her complexion. I can't

discipline people."

Miss Kalski's only reply was a low, indulgent laugh.

O'Mally braced himself on the morning of Ardessa's return. He told

the waiter at his club to bring him a second pot of coffee and to

bring it hot. He was really afraid of her. When she presented

herself at his office at 10:30 he complimented her upon her tan and

asked about her vacation. Then he broke the news to her.

"We want to make a few temporary changes about here, Miss Devine,

for the summer months. The business department is short of help.

Henderson is going to put Miss Kalski on the books for a while to

figure out some economies for him, and he is going to take you over.

Meantime I'll get Becky broken in so that she could take your work

if you were sick or anything."

Ardessa drew herself up.

"I've not been accustomed to commercial work, Mr. O'Mally. I've no

interest in it, and I don't care to brush up in it."

"Brushing up is just what we need, Miss Devine." O'Mally began

tramping about his room expansively. "I'm going to brush everybody

up. I'm going to brush a few people out; but I want you to stay with

us, of course. You belong here. Don't be hasty now. Go to your room

and think it over."

Ardessa was beginning to cry, and O'Mally was afraid he would lose

his nerve. He looked out of the window at a new sky-scraper that was

building, while she retired without a word.

At her own desk Ardessa sat down breathless and trembling. The one

thing she had never doubted was her unique value to O'Mally. She

had, as she told herself, taught him everything. She would say a few

things to Becky Tietelbaum, and to that pigeon-breasted tailor, her

father, too! The worst of it was that Ardessa had herself brought it

all about; she could see that clearly now. She had carefully trained

and qualified her successor. Why had she ever civilized Becky? Why

had she taught her manners and deportment, broken her of the

gum-chewing habit, and made her presentable? In her original state

O'Mally would never have put up with her, no matter what her

ability.

Ardessa told herself that O'Mally was notoriously fickle; Becky

amused him, but he would soon find out her limitations. The wise

thing, she knew, was to humor him; but it seemed to her that she

could not swallow her pride. Ardessa grew yellower within the hour.

Over and over in her mind she bade O'Mally a cold adieu and minced

out past the grand old man at the desk for the last time. But each

exit she rehearsed made her feel sorrier for herself. She thought

over all the offices she knew, but she realized that she could never

meet their inexorable standards of efficiency.

While she was bitterly deliberating, O'Mally himself wandered in,

rattling his keys nervously in his pocket. He shut the door behind

him.

"Now, you're going to come through with this all right, aren't you,

Miss Devine? I want Henderson to get over the notion that my people

over here are stuck up and think the business department are old

shoes. That's where we get our money from, as he often reminds me.

You'll be the best-paid girl over there; no reduction, of course.

You don't want to go wandering off to some new office where

personality doesn't count for anything." He sat down confidentially

on the edge of her desk. "Do you, now, Miss Devine?"

Ardessa simpered tearfully as she replied.

"Mr. O'Mally," she brought out, "you'll soon find that Becky is not

the sort of girl to meet people for you when you are away. I don't

see how you can think of letting her."

"That's one thing I want to change, Miss Devine. You're too

soft-handed with the has-beens and the never-was-ers. You're too

much of a lady for this rough game. Nearly everybody who comes in

here wants to sell us a gold-brick, and you treat them as if they

were bringing in wedding presents. Becky is as rough as sandpaper,

and she'll clear out a lot of dead wood." O'Mally rose, and tapped

Ardessa's shrinking shoulder. "Now, be a sport and go through with

it, Miss Devine. I'll see that you don't lose. Henderson thinks

you'll refuse to do his work, so I want you to get moved in there

before he comes back from lunch. I've had a desk put in his office

for you. Miss Kalski is in the bookkeeper's room half the time now."

Rena Kalski was amazed that afternoon when a line of office boys

entered, carrying Miss Devine's effects, and when Ardessa herself

coldly followed them. After Ardessa had arranged her desk, Miss

Kalski went over to her and told her about some matters of routine

very good-naturedly. Ardessa looked pretty badly shaken up, and Rena

bore no grudges.

"When you want the dope on the correspondence with the paper men,

don't bother to look it up. I've got it all in my head, and I can

save time for you. If he wants you to go over the printing bills

every week, you'd better let me help you with that for a while. I

can stay almost any afternoon. It's quite a trick to figure out the

plates and over-time charges till you get used to it. I've worked

out a quick method that saves trouble."

When Henderson came in at three he found Ardessa, chilly, but civil,

awaiting his instructions. He knew she disapproved of his tastes and

his manners, but he didn't mind. What interested and amused him was

that Rena Kalski, whom he had always thought as cold-blooded as an

adding-machine, seemed to be making a hair-mattress of herself to

break Ardessa's fall.

At five o'clock, when Ardessa rose to go, the business manager said

breezily:

"See you at nine in the morning, Miss Devine. We begin on the

stroke."

Ardessa faded out of the door, and Miss Kalski's slender back

squirmed with amusement.

"I never thought to hear such words spoken," she admitted; "but I

guess she'll limber up all right. The atmosphere is bad over there.

They get moldy."

* * * * *

After the next monthly luncheon of the heads of departments, O'Mally

said to Henderson, as he feed the coat-boy:

"By the way, how are you making it with the bartered bride?"

Henderson smashed on his Panama as he said:

"Any time you want her back, don't be delicate."

But O'Mally shook his red head and laughed.

"Oh, I'm no Indian giver!"

_Century_, May 1918

_Her Boss_

Paul Wanning opened the front door of his house in Orange, closed it

softly behind him, and stood looking about the hall as he drew off

his gloves.

Nothing was changed there since last night, and yet he stood gazing

about him with an interest which a long-married man does not often

feel in his own reception hall. The rugs, the two pillars, the

Spanish tapestry chairs, were all the same. The Venus di Medici

stood on her column as usual and there, at the end of the hall

(opposite the front door), was the full-length portrait of Mrs.

Wanning, maturely blooming forth in an evening gown, signed with the

name of a French painter who seemed purposely to have made his

signature indistinct. Though the signature was largely what one paid

for, one couldn't ask him to do it over.

In the dining room the colored man was moving about the table set

for dinner, under the electric cluster. The candles had not yet been

lighted. Wanning watched him with a homesick feeling in his heart.

They had had Sam a long while, twelve years, now. His warm hall, the

lighted dining-room, the drawing room where only the flicker of the

wood fire played upon the shining surfaces of many objects--they

seemed to Wanning like a haven of refuge. It had never occurred to

him that his house was too full of things. He often said, and he

believed, that the women of his household had "perfect taste." He

had paid for these objects, sometimes with difficulty, but always

with pride. He carried a heavy life-insurance and permitted himself

to spend most of the income from a good law practise. He wished,

during his life-time, to enjoy the benefits of his wife's

discriminating extravagance.

Yesterday Wanning's doctor had sent him to a specialist. Today the

specialist, after various laboratory tests, had told him most

disconcerting things about the state of very necessary, but hitherto

wholly uninteresting, organs of his body.

The information pointed to something incredible; insinuated that his

residence in this house was only temporary; that he, whose time was so

full, might have to leave not only his house and his office and his

club, but a world with which he was extremely well satisfied--the

only world he knew anything about.

Wanning unbuttoned his overcoat, but did not take it off. He stood

folding his muffler slowly and carefully. What he did not understand

was, how he could go while other people stayed. Sam would be moving

about the table like this, Mrs. Wanning and her daughters would be

dressing upstairs, when he would not be coming home to dinner any

more; when he would not, indeed, be dining anywhere.

Sam, coming to turn on the parlor lights, saw Wanning and stepped

behind him to take his coat.

"Good evening, Mr. Wanning, sah, excuse me. You entahed so quietly,

sah, I didn't heah you."

The master of the house slipped out of his coat and went languidly

upstairs.

He tapped at the door of his wife's room, which stood ajar.

"Come in, Paul," she called from her dressing table.

She was seated, in a violet dressing gown, giving the last touches to

her coiffure, both arms lifted. They were firm and white, like her neck

and shoulders. She was a handsome woman of fifty-five,--still a

woman, not an old person, Wanning told himself, as he kissed her

cheek. She was heavy in figure, to be sure, but she had kept, on the

whole, presentable outlines. Her complexion was good, and she wore

less false hair than either of her daughters.

Wanning himself was five years older, but his sandy hair did not

show the gray in it, and since his mustache had begun to grow white

he kept it clipped so short that it was unobtrusive. His fresh skin

made him look younger than he was. Not long ago he had overheard the

stenographers in his law office discussing the ages of their

employers. They had put him down at fifty, agreeing that his two

partners must be considerably older than he--which was not the case.

Wanning had an especially kindly feeling for the little new girl, a

copyist, who had exclaimed that "Mr. Wanning couldn't be fifty; he

seemed so boyish!"

Wanning lingered behind his wife, looking at her in the mirror.

"Well, did you tell the girls, Julia?" he asked, trying to speak

casually.

Mrs. Wanning looked up and met his eyes in the glass. "The girls?"

She noticed a strange expression come over his face.

"About your health, you mean? Yes, dear, but I tried not to alarm

them. They feel dreadfully. I'm going to have a talk with Dr. Seares

myself. These specialists are all alarmists, and I've often heard of

his frightening people."

She rose and took her husband's arm, drawing him toward the

fireplace.

"You are not going to let this upset you, Paul? If you take care of

yourself, everything will come out all right. You have always been

so strong. One has only to look at you."

"Did you," Wanning asked, "say anything to Harold?"

"Yes, of course. I saw him in town today, and he agrees with me that

Seares draws the worst conclusions possible. He says even the young

men are always being told the most terrifying things. Usually they

laugh at the doctors and do as they please. You certainly don't look

like a sick man, and you don't feel like one, do you?"

She patted his shoulder, smiled at him encouragingly, and rang for

the maid to come and hook her dress.

When the maid appeared at the door, Wanning went out through the

bathroom to his own sleeping chamber. He was too much dispirited to

put on a dinner coat, though such remissness was always noticed. He

sat down and waited for the sound of the gong, leaving his door

open, on the chance that perhaps one of his daughters would come in.

When Wanning went down to dinner he found his wife already at her

chair, and the table laid for four.

"Harold," she explained, "is not coming home. He has to attend a

first night in town."

A moment later their two daughters entered, obviously "dressed."

They both wore earrings and masses of hair. The daughters' names

were Roma and Florence,--Roma, Firenze, one of the young men who

came to the house often, but not often enough, had called them.

Tonight they were going to a rehearsal of "The Dances of the

Nations,"--a benefit performance in which Miss Roma was to lead the

Spanish dances, her sister the Grecian.

The elder daughter had often been told that her name suited her

admirably. She looked, indeed, as we are apt to think the

unrestrained beauties of later Rome must have looked,--but as their

portrait busts emphatically declare they did not. Her head was

massive, her lips full and crimson, her eyes large and heavy-lidded,

her forehead low. At costume balls and in living pictures she was

always Semiramis, or Poppea, or Theodora. Barbaric accessories

brought out something cruel and even rather brutal in her handsome

face. The men who were attracted to her were somehow afraid of her.

Florence was slender, with a long, graceful neck, a restless head,

and a flexible mouth--discontent lurked about the corners of it. Her

shoulders were pretty, but her neck and arms were too thin. Roma was

always struggling to keep within a certain weight--her chin and

upper arms grew persistently more solid--and Florence was always

striving to attain a certain weight. Wanning used sometimes to

wonder why these disconcerting fluctuations could not go the other

way; why Roma could not melt away as easily as did her sister, who

had to be sent to Palm Beach to save the precious pounds.

"I don't see why you ever put Rickie Allen in charge of the English

country dances," Florence said to her sister, as they sat down. "He

knows the figures, of course, but he has no real style."

Roma looked annoyed. Rickie Allen was one of the men who came to the

house almost often enough.

"He is absolutely to be depended upon, that's why," she said firmly.

"I think he is just right for it, Florence," put in Mrs. Wanning.

"It's remarkable he should feel that he can give up the time; such a

busy man. He must be very much interested in the movement."

Florence's lip curled drolly under her soup spoon. She shot an

amused glance at her mother's dignity.

"Nothing doing," her keen eyes seemed to say.

Though Florence was nearly thirty and her sister a little beyond,

there was, seriously, nothing doing. With so many charms and so much

preparation, they never, as Florence vulgarly said, quite pulled it

off. They had been rushed, time and again, and Mrs. Wanning had

repeatedly steeled herself to bear the blow. But the young men went

to follow a career in Mexico or the Philippines, or moved to

Yonkers, and escaped without a mortal wound.

Roma turned graciously to her father.

"I met Mr. Lane at the Holland House today, where I was lunching

with the Burtons, father. He asked about you, and when I told him

you were not so well as usual, he said he would call you up. He

wants to tell you about some doctor he discovered in Iowa, who cures

everything with massage and hot water. It sounds freakish, but Mr.

Lane is a very clever man, isn't he?"

"Very," assented Wanning.

"I should think he must be!" sighed Mrs. Wanning. "How in the world

did he make all that money, Paul? He didn't seem especially

promising years ago, when we used to see so much of them."

"Corporation business. He's attorney for the P. L. and G.," murmured

her husband.

"What a pile he must have!" Florence watched the old negro's slow

movements with restless eyes. "Here is Jenny, a Contessa, with a

glorious palace in Genoa that her father must have bought her.

Surely Aldrini had nothing. Have you seen the baby count's pictures,

Roma? They're very cunning. I should think you'd go to Genoa and

visit Jenny."

"We must arrange that, Roma. It's such an opportunity." Though Mrs.

Wanning addressed her daughter, she looked at her husband. "You

would get on so well among their friends. When Count Aldrini was

here you spoke Italian much better than poor Jenny. I remember when

we entertained him, he could scarcely say anything to her at all."

Florence tried to call up an answering flicker of amusement upon her

sister's calm, well-bred face. She thought her mother was rather

outdoing herself tonight,--since Aldrini had at least managed to say

the one important thing to Jenny, somehow, somewhere. Jenny Lane had

been Roma's friend and schoolmate, and the Count was an ephemeral

hope in Orange. Mrs. Wanning was one of the first matrons to declare

that she had no prejudices against foreigners, and at the dinners

that were given for the Count, Roma was always put next him to act

as interpreter.

Roma again turned to her father.

"If I were you, dear, I would let Mr. Lane tell me about his doctor.

New discoveries are often made by queer people."

Roma's voice was low and sympathetic; she never lost her dignity.

Florence asked if she might have her coffee in her room, while she

dashed off a note, and she ran upstairs humming "Bright Lights" and

wondering how she was going to stand her family until the summer

scattering. Why could Roma never throw off her elegant reserve and

call things by their names? She sometimes thought she might like her

sister, if she would only come out in the open and howl about her

disappointments.

Roma, drinking her coffee deliberately, asked her father if they

might have the car early, as they wanted to pick up Mr. Allen and

Mr. Rydberg on their way to rehearsal.

Wanning said certainly. Heaven knew he was not stingy about his car,

though he could never quite forget that in his day it was the young

men who used to call for the girls when they went to rehearsals.

"You are going with us, Mother?" Roma asked as they rose.

"I think so dear. Your father will want to go to bed early, and I

shall sleep better if I go out. I am going to town tomorrow to pour

tea for Harold. We must get him some new silver, Paul. I am quite

ashamed of his spoons."

Harold, the only son, was a playwright--as yet "unproduced"--and he

had a studio in Washington Square.

A half-hour later, Wanning was alone in his library. He would not

permit himself to feel aggrieved. What was more commendable than a

mother's interest in her children's pleasures? Moreover, it was his

wife's way of following things up, of never letting die grass grow

under her feet, that had helped to push him along in the world. She

was more ambitious than he,--that had been good for him. He was

naturally indolent, and Julia's childlike desire to possess material

objects, to buy what other people were buying, had been the spur

that made him go after business. It had, moreover, made his house

the attractive place he believed it to be.

"Suppose," his wife sometimes said to him when the bills came in

from Céleste or Mme. Blanche, "suppose you had homely daughters; how

would you like that?"

He wouldn't have liked it. When he went anywhere with his three

ladies, Wanning always felt very well done by. He had no complaint

to make about them, or about anything. That was why it seemed so

unreasonable--He felt along his back incredulously with his hand.

Harold, of course, was a trial; but among all his business friends,

he knew scarcely one who had a promising boy.

The house was so still that Wanning could hear a faint, metallic

tinkle from the butler's pantry. Old Sam was washing up the silver,

which he put away himself every night.

Wanning rose and walked aimlessly down the hall and out through the

dining-room.

"Any Apollinaris on ice, Sam? I'm not feeling very well tonight."

The old colored man dried his hands.

"Yessah, Mistah Wanning. Have a little rye with it, sah?"

"No, thank you, Sam. That's one of the things I can't do any more.

I've been to see a big doctor in the city, and he tells me there's

something seriously wrong with me. My kidneys have sort of gone back

on me."

It was a satisfaction to Wanning to name the organ that had betrayed

him, while all the rest of him was so sound.

Sam was immediately interested. He shook his grizzled head and

looked full of wisdom.

"Don't seem like a gen'leman of such a temperate life ought to have

anything wrong thar, sah."

"No, it doesn't, does it?"

Wanning leaned against the china closet and talked to Sam for nearly

half an hour. The specialist who condemned him hadn't seemed half so

much interested. There was not a detail about the examination and

the laboratory tests in which Sam did not show the deepest concern.

He kept asking Wanning if he could remember "straining himself" when

he was a young man.

"I've knowed a strain like that to sleep in a man for yeahs and

yeahs, and then come back on him, 'deed I have," he said,

mysteriously. "An' again, it might be you got a floatin' kidney,

sah. Aftah dey once teah loose, dey sometimes don't make no trouble

for quite a while."

When Wanning went to his room he did not go to bed. He sat up until

he heard the voices of his wife and daughters in the hall below. His

own bed somehow frightened him. In all the years he had lived in

this house he had never before looked about his room, at that bed,

with the thought that he might one day be trapped there, and might

not get out again. He had been ill, of course, but his room had

seemed a particularly pleasant place for a sick man; sunlight,

flowers,--agreeable, well-dressed women coming in and out.

Now there was something sinister about the bed itself, about its

position, and its relation to the rest of the furniture.

II

The next morning, on his way downtown, Wanning got off the subway

train at Astor Place and walked over to Washington Square. He

climbed three flights of stairs and knocked at his son's studio.

Harold, dressed, with his stick and gloves in his hand, opened the

door. He was just going over to the Brevoort for breakfast. He

greeted his father with the cordial familiarity practised by all the

"boys" of his set, clapped him on the shoulder and said in his

light, tonsilitis voice:

"Come in, Governor, how delightful! I haven't had a call from you in

a long time."

He threw his hat and gloves on the writing table. He was a perfect

gentleman, even with his father.

Florence said the matter with Harold was that he had heard people

say he looked like Byron, and stood for it.

What Harold would stand for in such matters was, indeed, the best

definition of him. When he read his play "The Street Walker" in

drawing rooms and one lady told him it had the poetic symbolism of

Tchekhov, and another said that it suggested the biting realism of

Brieux, he never, in his most secret thoughts, questioned the acumen

of either lady. Harold's speech, even if you heard it in the next

room and could not see him, told you that he had no sense of the

absurd,--a throaty staccato, with never a downward inflection,

trustfully striving to please.

"Just going out?" his father asked. "I won't keep you. Your mother

told you I had a discouraging session with Seares?"

"So awfully sorry you've had this bother, Governor; just as sorry as

I can be. No question about it's coming out all right, but it's a

downright nuisance, your having to diet and that sort of thing. And

I suppose you ought to follow directions, just to make us all feel

comfortable, oughtn't you?" Harold spoke with fluent sympathy.

Wanning sat down on the arm of a chair and shook his head. "Yes,

they do recommend a diet, but they don't promise much from it."

Harold laughed precipitately. "Delicious! All doctors are, aren't

they? So profound and oracular! The medicine-man; it's quite the

same idea, you see; with tom-toms."

Wanning knew that Harold meant something subtle,--one of the

subtleties which he said were only spoiled by being explained--so he

came bluntly to one of the issues he had in mind.

"I would like to see you settled before I quit the harness, Harold."

Harold was absolutely tolerant.

He took out his cigarette case and burnished it with his

handkerchief.

"I perfectly understand your point of view, dear Governor, but

perhaps you don't altogether get mine. Isn't it so? I am settled.

What you mean by being settled, would unsettle me, completely. I'm

cut out for just such an existence as this; to live four floors up

in an attic, get my own breakfast, and have a charwoman to do for

me. I should be awfully bored with an establishment. I'm quite

content with a little diggings like this."

Wanning's eyes fell. Somebody had to pay the rent of even such

modest quarters as contented Harold, but to say so would be rude,

and Harold himself was never rude. Wanning did not, this morning,

feel equal to hearing a statement of his son's uncommercial ideals.

"I know," he said hastily. "But now we're up against hard facts, my

boy. I did not want to alarm your mother, but I've had a time limit

put on me, and it's not a very long one."

Harold threw away the cigarette he had just lighted in a burst of

indignation.

"That's the sort of thing I consider criminal, Father, absolutely

criminal! What doctor has a right to suggest such a thing? Seares

himself may be knocked out tomorrow. What have laboratory tests got

to do with a man's will to live? The force of that depends upon his

entire personality, not on any organ or pair of organs."

Harold thrust his hands in his pockets and walked up and down, very

much stirred. "Really, I have a very poor opinion of scientists.

They ought to be made serve an apprenticeship in art, to get some

conception of the power of human motives. Such brutality!"

Harold's plays dealt with the grimmest and most depressing matters,

but he himself was always agreeable, and he insisted upon high

cheerfulness as the correct tone of human intercourse.

Wanning rose and turned to go. There was, in Harold, simply no

reality, to which one could break through. The young man took up his

hat and gloves.

"Must you go? Let me step along with you to the sub. The walk will

do me good."

Harold talked agreeably all the way to Astor Place. His father heard

little of what he said, but he rather liked his company and his wish

to be pleasant.

Wanning went to his club for luncheon, meaning to spend the

afternoon with some of his friends who had retired from business and

who read the papers there in the empty hours between two and seven.

He got no satisfaction, however. When he tried to tell these men of

his present predicament, they began to describe ills of their own in

which he could not feel interested. Each one of them had a

treacherous organ of which he spoke with animation, almost with

pride, as if it were a crafty business competitor whom he was

constantly outwitting. Each had a doctor, too, for whom he was

ardently soliciting business. They wanted either to telephone their

doctor and make an appointment for Wanning, or to take him then and

there to the consulting room. When he did not accept these

invitations, they lost interest in him and remembered engagements.

He called a taxi and returned to the offices of McQuiston, Wade, and

Wanning.

Settled at his desk, Wanning decided that he would not go home to

dinner, but would stay at the office and dictate a long letter to an

old college friend who lived in Wyoming. He could tell Douglas Brown

things that he had not succeeded in getting to any one else. Brown,

out in the Wind River mountains, couldn't defend himself, couldn't

slap Wanning on the back and tell him to gather up the sunbeams.

He called up his house in Orange to say that he would not be home

until late. Roma answered the telephone. He spoke mournfully, but

she was not disturbed by it.

"Very well, Father. Don't get too tired," she said in her well

modulated voice.

When Wanning was ready to dictate his letter, he looked out from his

private office into the reception room and saw that his stenographer

in her hat and gloves, and furs of the newest cut, was just leaving.

"Goodnight, Mr. Wanning," she said, drawing down her dotted veil.

Had there been important business letters to be got off on the night

mail, he would have felt that he could detain her, but not for

anything personal. Miss Doane was an expert legal stenographer, and

she knew her value. The slightest delay in dispatching office

business annoyed her. Letters that were not signed until the next

morning awoke her deepest contempt. She was scrupulous in

professional etiquette, and Wanning felt that their relations,

though pleasant, were scarcely cordial.

As Miss Doane's trim figure disappeared through the outer door,

little Annie Wooley, the copyist, came in from the stenographers'

room. Her hat was pinned over one ear, and she was scrambling into

her coat as she came, holding her gloves in her teeth and her

battered handbag in the fist that was already through a sleeve.

"Annie, I wanted to dictate a letter. You were just leaving, weren't

you?"

"Oh, I don't mind!" she answered cheerfully, and pulling off her old

coat, threw it on a chair. "I'll get my book."

She followed him into his room and sat down by a table,--though she

wrote with her book on her knee.

Wanning had several times kept her after office hours to take his

private letters for him, and she had always been good-natured about

it. On each occasion, when he gave her a dollar to get her dinner,

she protested, laughing, and saying that she could never eat so much

as that.

She seemed a happy sort of little creature, didn't pout when she was

scolded, and giggled about her own mistakes in spelling. She was

plump and undersized, always dodging under the elbows of taller

people and clattering about on high heels, much run over. She had

bright black eyes and fuzzy black hair in which, despite Miss

Doane's reprimands, she often stuck her pencil. She was the girl who

couldn't believe that Wanning was fifty, and he had liked her ever

since he overheard that conversation.

Tilting back his chair--he never assumed this position when he

dictated to Miss Doane--Wanning began: "To Mr. D. E. Brown, South

Forks, Wyoming."

He shaded his eyes with his hand and talked off a long letter to

this man who would be sorry that his mortal frame was breaking up.

He recalled to him certain fine months they had spent together on

the Wind River when they were young men, and said he sometimes

wished that like D. E. Brown, he had claimed his freedom in a big

country where the wheels did not grind a man as hard as they did in

New York. He had spent all these years hustling about and getting

ready to live the way he wanted to live, and now he had a puncture

the doctors couldn't mend. What was the use of it?

Wanning's thoughts were fixed on the trout streams and the great

silver-firs in the canyons of the Wind River Mountains, when he was

disturbed by a soft, repeated sniffling. He looked out between his

fingers. Little Annie, carried away by his eloquence, was fairly

panting to make dots and dashes fast enough, and she was sopping her

eyes with an unpresentable, end-of-the-day handkerchief.

Wanning rambled on in his dictation. Why was she crying? What did it

matter to her? He was a man who said good-morning to her, who

sometimes took an hour of the precious few she had left at the end

of the day and then complained about her bad spelling. When the

letter was finished, he handed her a new two dollar bill.

"I haven't got any change tonight; and anyhow, I'd like you to eat a

whole lot. I'm on a diet, and I want to see everybody else eat."

Annie tucked her notebook under her arm and stood looking at the

bill which she had not taken up from the table.

"I don't like to be paid for taking letters to your friends, Mr.

Wanning," she said impulsively. "I can run personal letters off

between times. It ain't as if I needed the money," she added

carelessly.

"Get along with you! Anybody who is eighteen years old and has a

sweet tooth needs money, all they can get."

Annie giggled and darted out with the bill in her hand.

Wanning strolled aimlessly after her into the reception room.

"Let me have that letter before lunch tomorrow, please, and be sure

that nobody sees it." He stopped and frowned. "I don't look very

sick, do I?"

"I should say you don't!" Annie got her coat on after considerable

tugging. "Why don't you call in a specialist? My mother called a

specialist for my father before he died."

"Oh, is your father dead?"

"I should say he is! He was a painter by trade, and he fell off a

seventy-foot stack into the East River. Mother couldn't get anything

out of the company, because he wasn't buckled. He lingered for four

months, so I know all about taking care of sick people. I was

attending business college then, and sick as he was, he used to give

me dictation for practise. He made us all go into professions; the

girls, too. He didn't like us to just run."

Wanning would have liked to keep Annie and hear more about her

family, but it was nearly seven o'clock, and he knew he ought, in

mercy, to let her go. She was the only person to whom he had talked

about his illness who had been frank and honest with him, who had

looked at him with eyes that concealed nothing. When he broke the

news of his condition to his partners that morning, they shut him

off as if he were uttering indecent ravings. All day they had met

him with a hurried, abstracted manner. McQuiston and Wade went out

to lunch together, and he knew what they were thinking, perhaps

talking, about. Wanning had brought into the firm valuable business,

but he was less enterprising than either of his partners.

III

In the early summer Wanning's family scattered. Roma swallowed her

pride and sailed for Genoa to visit the Contessa Jenny. Harold went

to Cornish to be in an artistic atmosphere. Mrs. Wanning and

Florence took a cottage at York Harbor where Wanning was supposed to

join them whenever he could get away from town. He did not often get

away. He felt most at ease among his accustomed surroundings. He

kept his car in the city and went back and forth from his office to

the club where he was living. Old Sam, his butler, came in from

Orange every night to put his clothes in order and make him

comfortable.

Wanning began to feel that he would not tire of his office in a

hundred years. Although he did very little work, it was pleasant to

go down town every morning when the streets were crowded, the sky

clear, and the sunshine bright. From the windows of his private

office he could see the harbor and watch the ocean liners come down

the North River and go out to sea.

While he read his mail, he often looked out and wondered why he had

been so long indifferent to that extraordinary scene of human

activity and hopefulness. How had a short-lived race of beings the

energy and courage valiantly to begin enterprises which they could

follow for only a few years; to throw up towers and build

sea-monsters and found great businesses, when the frailest of the

materials with which they worked, the paper upon which they wrote,

the ink upon their pens, had more permanence in this world than

they? All this material rubbish lasted. The linen clothing and

cosmetics of the Egyptians had lasted. It was only the human flame

that certainly, certainly went out. Other things had a fighting

chance; they might meet with mishap and be destroyed, they might

not. But the human creature who gathered and shaped and hoarded and

foolishly loved these things, he had no chance--absolutely none.

Wanning's cane, his hat, his topcoat, might go from beggar to beggar

and knock about in this world for another fifty years or so; but not

he.

In the late afternoon he never hurried to leave his office now.

Wonderful sunsets burned over the North River, wonderful stars

trembled up among the towers; more wonderful than anything he could

hurry away to. One of his windows looked directly down upon the

spire of Old Trinity, with the green churchyard and the pale

sycamores far below. Wanning often dropped into the church when he

was going out to lunch; not because he was trying to make his peace

with Heaven, but because the church was old and restful and

familiar, because it and its gravestones had sat in the same place

for a long while. He bought flowers from the street boys and kept

them on his desk, which his partners thought strange behavior, and

which Miss Doane considered a sign that he was failing.

But there were graver things than bouquets for Miss Doane and the

senior partner to ponder over.

The senior partner, McQuiston, in spite of his silvery hair and

mustache and his important church connections, had rich natural

taste for scandal.--After Mr. Wade went away for his vacation, in

May, Wanning took Annie Wooley out of the copying room, put her at a

desk in his private office, and raised her pay to eighteen dollars a

week, explaining to McQuiston that for the summer months he would

need a secretary. This explanation satisfied neither McQuiston nor

Miss Doane.

Annie was also paid for overtime, and although Wanning attended to

very little of the office business now, there was a great deal of

overtime. Miss Doane was, of course, 'above' questioning a chit like

Annie; but what was he doing with his time and his new secretary,

she wanted to know?

If anyone had told her that Wanning was writing a book, she would

have said bitterly that it was just like him. In his youth Wanning

had hankered for the pen. When he studied law, he had intended to

combine that profession with some tempting form of authorship. Had

he remained a bachelor, he would have been an unenterprising

literary lawyer to the end of his days. It was his wife's

restlessness and her practical turn of mind that had made him a

money-getter. His illness seemed to bring back to him the illusions

with which he left college.

As soon as his family were out of the way and he shut up the Orange

house, he began to dictate his autobiography to Annie Wooley. It was

not only the story of his life, but an expression of all his

theories and opinions, and a commentary on the fifty years of events

which he could remember.

Fortunately, he was able to take great interest in this undertaking.

He had the happiest convictions about the clear-cut style he was

developing and his increasing felicity in phrasing. He meant to

publish the work handsomely, at his own expense and under his own

name. He rather enjoyed the thought of how greatly disturbed Harold

would be. He and Harold differed in their estimates of books. All

the solid works which made up Wanning's library, Harold considered

beneath contempt. Anybody, he said, could do that sort of thing.

When Wanning could not sleep at night, he turned on the light beside

his bed and made notes on the chapter he meant to dictate the next

day.

When he returned to the office after lunch, he gave instructions

that he was not to be interrupted by telephone calls, and shut

himself up with his secretary.

After he had opened all the windows and taken off his coat, he fell

to dictating. He found it a delightful occupation, the solace of

each day. Often he had sudden fits of tiredness; then he would lie

down on the leather sofa and drop asleep, while Annie read "The

Leopard's Spots" until he awoke.

Like many another business man Wanning had relied so long on

stenographers that the operation of writing with a pen had become

laborious to him. When he undertook it, he wanted to cut everything

short. But walking up and down his private office, with the strong

afternoon sun pouring in at his windows, a fresh air stirring, all

the people and boats moving restlessly down there, he could say

things he wanted to say. It was like living his life over again.

He did not miss his wife or his daughters. He had become again the

mild, contemplative youth he was in college, before he had a

profession and a family to grind for, before the two needs which

shape our destiny had made of him pretty much what they make of

every man.

At five o'clock Wanning sometimes went out for a cup of tea and took

Annie along. He felt dull and discouraged as soon as he was alone.

So long as Annie was with him, he could keep a grip on his own

thoughts. They talked about what he had just been dictating to her.

She found that he liked to be questioned, and she tried to be

greatly interested in it all.

After tea, they went back to the office. Occasionally Wanning lost

track of time and kept Annie until it grew dark. He knew he had old

McQuiston guessing, but he didn't care. One day the senior partner

came to him with a reproving air.

"I am afraid Miss Doane is leaving us, Paul. She feels that Miss

Wooley's promotion is irregular."

"How is that any business of hers, I'd like to know? She has all my

legal work. She is always disagreeable enough about doing anything

else."

McQuiston's puffy red face went a shade darker.

"Miss Doane has a certain professional pride; a strong feeling for

office organization. She doesn't care to fill an equivocal position.

I don't know that I blame her. She feels that there is something not

quite regular about the confidence you seem to place in this

inexperienced young woman."

Wanning pushed back his chair.

"I don't care a hang about Miss Doane's sense of propriety. I need a

stenographer who will carry out my instructions. I've carried out

Miss Doane's long enough. I've let that schoolma'am hector me for

years. She can go when she pleases."

That night McQuiston wrote to his partner that things were in a bad

way, and they would have to keep an eye on Wanning. He had been seen

at the theatre with his new stenographer.

That was true. Wanning had several times taken Annie to the Palace

on Saturday afternoon. When all his acquaintances were off motoring

or playing golf, when the down-town offices and even the streets

were deserted, it amused him to watch a foolish show with a

delighted, cheerful little person beside him.

Beyond her generosity, Annie had no shining merits of character, but

she had the gift of thinking well of everything, and wishing well.

When she was there Wanning felt as if there were someone who cared

whether this was a good or a bad day with him. Old Sam, too, was

like that. While the old black man put him to bed and made him

comfortable, Wanning could talk to him as he talked to little Annie.

Even if he dwelt upon his illness, in plain terms, in detail, he did

not feel as if he were imposing on them.

People like Sam and Annie admitted misfortune,--admitted it almost

cheerfully. Annie and her family did not consider illness or any of

its hard facts vulgar or indecent. It had its place in their scheme

of life, as it had not in that of Wanning's friends.

Annie came out of a typical poor family of New York. Of eight

children, only four lived to grow up. In such families the stream of

life is broad enough, but runs shallow. In the children, vitality is

exhausted early. The roots do not go down into anything very strong.

Illness and deaths and funerals, in her own family and in those of

her friends, had come at frequent intervals in Annie's life. Since

they had to be, she and her sisters made the best of them. There was

something to be got out of funerals, even, if they were managed

right. They kept people in touch with old friends who had moved

uptown, and revived kindly feelings.

Annie had often given up things she wanted because there was

sickness at home, and now she was patient with her boss. What he

paid her for overtime work by no means made up to her what she lost.

Annie was not in the least thrifty, nor were any of her sisters. She

had to make a living, but she was not interested in getting all she

could for her time, or in laying up for the future. Girls like Annie

know that the future is a very uncertain thing, and they feel no

responsibility about it. The present is what they have--and it is

all they have. If Annie missed a chance to go sailing with the

plumber's son on Saturday afternoon, why, she missed it. As for the

two dollars her boss gave her, she handed them over to her mother.

Now that Annie was getting more money, one of her sisters quit a job

she didn't like and was staying at home for a rest. That was all

promotion meant to Annie.

The first time Annie's boss asked her to work on Saturday afternoon,

she could not hide her disappointment. He suggested that they might

knock off early and go to a show, or take a run in his car, but she

grew tearful and said it would be hard to make her family

understand. Wanning thought perhaps he could explain to her mother.

He called his motor and took Annie home.

When his car stopped in front of the tenement house on Eighth

Avenue, heads came popping out of the windows for six storys up, and

all the neighbor women, in dressing sacks and wrappers, gazed down

at the machine and at the couple alighting from it. A motor meant a

wedding or the hospital.

The plumber's son, Willy Steen, came over from the corner saloon to

see what was going on, and Annie introduced him at the doorstep.

Mrs. Wooley asked Wanning to come into the parlor and invited him to

have a chair of ceremony between the folding bed and the piano.

Annie, nervous and tearful, escaped to the dining-room--the cheerful

spot where the daughters visited with each other and with their

friends. The parlor was a masked sleeping chamber and store room.

The plumber's son sat down on the sofa beside Mrs. Wooley, as if he

were accustomed to share in the family councils. Mrs. Wooley waited

expectant and kindly. She looked the sensible, hard-working woman

that she was, and one could see she hadn't lived all her life on

Eighth Avenue without learning a great deal.

Wanning explained to her that he was writing a book which he wanted

to finish during the summer months when business was not so heavy.

He was ill and could not work regularly. His secretary would have to

take his dictation when he felt able to give it; must, in short, be

a sort of companion to him. He would like to feel that she could go

out in his car with him, or even to the theater, when he felt like

it. It might have been better if he had engaged a young man for this

work, but since he had begun it with Annie, he would like to keep

her if her mother was willing.

Mrs. Wooley watched him with friendly, searching eyes. She glanced

at Willy Steen, who, wise in such distinctions, had decided that

there was nothing shady about Annie's boss. He nodded his sanction.

"I don't want my girl to conduct herself in any such way as will

prejudice her, Mr. Wanning," she said thoughtfully. "If you've got

daughters, you know how that is. You've been liberal with Annie, and

it's a good position for her. It's right she should go to business

every day, and I want her to do her work right, but I like to have

her home after working hours. I always think a young girl's time is

her own after business hours, and I try not to burden them when they

come home. I'm willing she should do your work as suits you, if it's

her wish; but I don't like to press her. The good times she misses

now, it's not you nor me, sir, that can make them up to her. These

young things has their feelings."

"Oh, I don't want to press her, either," Wanning said hastily. "I

simply want to know that you understand the situation. I've made her

a little present in my will as a recognition that she is doing more

for me than she is paid for."

"That's something above me, sir. We'll hope there won't be no

question of wills for many years yet," Mrs. Wooley spoke heartily.

"I'm glad if my girl can be of any use to you, just so she don't

prejudice herself."

The plumber's son rose as if the interview were over.

"It's all right, Mama Wooley, don't you worry," he said.

He picked up his canvas cap and turned to Wanning. "You see, Annie

ain't the sort of girl that would want to be spotted circulating

around with a monied party her folks didn't know all about. She'd

lose friends by it."

After this conversation Annie felt a great deal happier. She was

still shy and a trifle awkward with poor Wanning when they were

outside the office building, and she missed the old freedom of her

Saturday afternoons. But she did the best she could, and Willy Steen

tried to make it up to her.

In Annie's absence he often came in of an afternoon to have a cup of

tea and a sugar-bun with Mrs. Wooley and the daughter who was

"resting." As they sat at the dining-room table, they discussed

Annie's employer, his peculiarities, his health, and what he had

told Mrs. Wooley about his will.

Mrs. Wooley said she sometimes felt afraid he might disinherit his

children, as rich people often did, and make talk; but she hoped for

the best. Whatever came to Annie, she prayed it might not be in the

form of taxable property.

IV

Late in September Wanning grew suddenly worse. His family hurried

home, and he was put to bed in his house in Orange. He kept asking

the doctors when he could get back to the office, but he lived only

eight days.

The morning after his father's funeral, Harold went to the office to

consult Wanning's partners and to read the will. Everything in the

will was as it should be. There were no surprises except a codicil

in the form of a letter to Mrs. Wanning, dated July 8th, requesting

that out of the estate she should pay the sum of one thousand

dollars to his stenographer, Annie Wooley, "in recognition of her

faithful services."

"I thought Miss Doane was my father's stenographer," Harold

exclaimed.

Alec McQuiston looked embarrassed and spoke in a low, guarded tone.

"She was, for years. But this spring,--" he hesitated.

McQuiston loved a scandal. He leaned across his desk toward Harold.

"This spring your father put this little girl, Miss Wooley, a

copyist, utterly inexperienced, in Miss Doane's place. Miss Doane

was indignant and left us. The change made comment here in the

office. It was slightly--No, I will be frank with you, Harold, it

was very irregular."

Harold also looked grave. "What could my father have meant by such a

request as this to my mother?"

The silver haired senior partner flushed and spoke as if he were

trying to break something gently.

"I don't understand it, my boy. But I think, indeed I prefer to

think, that your father was not quite himself all this summer. A man

like your father does not, in his right senses, find pleasure in the

society of an ignorant, common little girl. He does not make a

practise of keeping her at the office after hours, often until eight

o'clock, or take her to restaurants and to the theater with him;

not, at least, in a slanderous city like New York."

Harold flinched before McQuiston's meaning gaze and turned aside in

pained silence. He knew, as a dramatist, that there are dark

chapters in all men's lives, and this but too clearly explained why

his father had stayed in town all summer instead of joining his

family.

McQuiston asked if he should ring for Annie Wooley.

Harold drew himself up. "No. Why should I see her? I prefer not to.

But with your permission, Mr. McQuiston, I will take charge of this

request to my mother. It could only give her pain, and might awaken

doubts in her mind."

"We hardly know," murmured the senior partner, "where an

investigation would lead us. Technically, of course, I cannot agree

with you. But if, as one of the executors of the will, you wish to

assume personal responsibility for this bequest, under the

circumstances--irregularities beget irregularities."

"My first duty to my father," said Harold, "is to protect my

mother."

That afternoon McQuiston called Annie Wooley into his private office

and told her that her services would not be needed any longer, and

that in lieu of notice the clerk would give her two weeks' salary.

"Can I call up here for references?" Annie asked.

"Certainly. But you had better ask for me, personally. You must know

there has been some criticism of you here in the office, Miss

Wooley."

"What about?" Annie asked boldly.

"Well, a young girl like you cannot render so much personal service

to her employer as you did to Mr. Wanning without causing

unfavorable comment. To be blunt with you, for your own good, my

dear young lady, your services to your employer should terminate in

the office, and at the close of office hours. Mr. Wanning was a very

sick man and his judgment was at fault, but you should have known

what a girl in your station can do and what she cannot do."

The vague discomfort of months flashed up in little Annie. She had

no mind to stand by and be lectured without having a word to say for

herself.

"Of course he was sick, poor man!" she burst out. "Not as anybody

seemed much upset about it. I wouldn't have given up my

half-holidays for anybody if they hadn't been sick, no matter what

they paid me. There wasn't anything in it for me."

McQuiston raised his hand warningly.

"That will do, young lady. But when you get another place, remember

this: it is never your duty to entertain or to provide amusement for

your employer."

He gave Annie a look which she did not clearly understand, although

she pronounced him a nasty old man as she hustled on her hat and

jacket.

When Annie reached home she found Willy Steen sitting with her

mother and sister at the dining-room table. This was the first day

that Annie had gone to the office since Wanning's death, and her

family awaited her return with suspense.

"Hello yourself," Annie called as she came in and threw her handbag

into an empty armchair.

"You're off early, Annie," said her mother gravely. "Has the will

been read?"

"I guess so. Yes, I know it has. Miss Wilson got it out of the safe

for them. The son came in. He's a pill."

"Was nothing said to you, daughter?"

"Yes, a lot. Please give me some tea, mother." Annie felt that her

swagger was failing.

"Don't tantalize us, Ann," her sister broke in. "Didn't you get

anything?"

"I got the mit, all right. And some back talk from the old man that

I'm awful sore about."

Annie dashed away the tears and gulped her tea.

Gradually her mother and Willy drew the story from her. Willy

offered at once to go to the office building and take his stand

outside the door and never leave it until he had punched old Mr.

McQuiston's face. He rose as if to attend to it at once, but Mrs.

Wooley drew him to his chair again and patted his arm.

"It would only start talk and get the girl in trouble, Willy. When

it's lawyers, folks in our station is helpless. I certainly believed

that man when he sat here; you heard him yourself. Such a gentleman

as he looked."

Willy thumped his great fist, still in punching position, down on

his knee.

"Never you be fooled again, Mama Wooley. You'll never get anything

out of a rich guy that he ain't signed up in the courts for. Rich is

tight. There's no exceptions."

Annie shook her head.

"I didn't want anything out of him. He was a nice, kind man, and he

had his troubles, I guess. He wasn't tight."

"Still," said Mrs. Wooley sadly, "Mr. Wanning had no call to hold

out promises. I hate to be disappointed in a gentleman. You've had

confining work for some time, daughter; a rest will do you good."

_Smart Set_, October 1919