[Pg 18] Therefore it happened that as Pearl wandered, lonely as a cloud, from office to office, longing for her friend's wisdom, Augusta herself was sitting in the outer office of a company, looking for a job. Though the office was that of the Finlay-Wood Engineering Co., the position which Miss Augusta Exeter was considering was that of a governess. She was not at all sure that she wanted the place. College women are not well disposed toward positions as governesses; yet as Miss Exeter sat there in the busy outer office and watched the office boys coming in and out, and the impassive young woman at the switchboard, enunciating again and again, "Finlay-Wood Company," "Hold the wire," she went over the advantages of this offer—a high salary, the two hottest months of the summer at Southampton, and the fact that as she was to be married in [Pg 19]October, she could not take a long-time position in any case. [Pg 19] Mr. Wood's secretary, with whom so far all the negotiations had been carried on, had impressed upon her the necessity of being punctual—"eleven precisely," he had said, for it seemed Mr. Wood was going to Mexico that afternoon. And so Augusta, who was punctual by nature, had found herself in the office ten minutes ahead of time. She sat listening to the telephone girl and watching a door which bore the simple inscription, "Mr. Wood." And just behind that door a tall sunburned man in the neighborhood of thirty was standing, slapping the pockets of his blue serge clothes and saying, "Griggs, I have a feeling I've forgotten something. What is it I've forgotten, Griggs?" The desk was as bare as a desk ought to be when its owner is going away for two months. Griggs ran his eye proudly over it. "No, Mr. Wood," he said. "I don't think anything has been forgotten. Nothing was left except the letter to the President, the Spanish dictionary and the Mexican currency. All that has been attended to." [Pg 20] [Pg 20] He consulted a list held in the palm of his hand. "It was something of my own," said Wood, and he eyed his secretary with an air that might have appeared stern but was merely concentrated, when the door opened and the office boy came in and said, "Miss Stone says she's notified him that there's a lady there to see him, and will we let her in to him?"
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