"There has never been anything like this before," said Bunner; "never anything in the least like this anywhere I have ever been."

"Well," said the treasurer, "I don't suppose we need distress ourselves about her finding another job."

There was a certain wistful undercurrent in his tone.

"No," said Bunner, slightly misunderstanding his meaning. "She is competent and industrious."

"She ought to get married, a pretty girl like that—not go about making trouble in offices," said the president.

"I have always been of the opinion," said the third vice president, "that it would be much simpler to run the office entirely with men."

"Oh, it would be much better—much better, of course," said Bunner; "only women are so much more accurate about detail, more industrious and less expensive."

And as there was no woman present to inquire why then men were so much more desirable, the [Pg 17]question dropped, and the president recalled the board's attention to the subject of the paper to be used in their next edition—the topic under consideration when Pearl made her entrance. It was rather hard to take any interest in it now.

[Pg 17]

And so Pearl began once again to go the round of agencies, to interview or be interviewed by office managers, and hear that if she came back in October there might be a chance. But October was three months away, and she could not live three months on something less than a hundred dollars. She even began to scan the columns of the newspapers—from clerks, through stenographers, ushers, and finally winders—she never found out what winders were.

If her dear friend and sage adviser, Augusta Exeter, had been in town she could have shared her room; but Augusta was in Vermont, visiting the family of the man she was going to marry. At least, Augusta's last letter had been from Vermont; but as a matter of fact, three days after Pearl left the Encyclopedia's employ Augusta came back to New York. She had had a letter from the agency where her name was registered practically offering a position which sounded too good to refuse. Besides, Augusta [Pg 18]did not really like farm life in Vermont, and the Baynes family, for some reason which she could not explain, gave her a composite picture of Horace, her fiancé, which tended to make her love him less. Even New York in midsummer was preferable.

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