The Priceless Pearl

by Alice Duer Miller

Her next place was with an ambitious young firm which was putting a new cleaning fluid on the market. At first, in a busy office, Pearl seemed to pass almost unnoticed. Then one day the two partners, young men both and heretofore like brothers, came to her together and asked her if she would do the firm a great favor—sit for her portrait to a well-known artist so that they might use her picture as a poster to advertise their product. Pearl consented—she thought it would be rather good fun. The result was successful. Indeed, the only criticism of the picture—which represented Pearl in tawny yellow holding up a saffron-colored robe at which she smiled brilliantly, with beneath it the caption, Why Does She Smile? Because Her Old Dress is Made New by—was that it would have been better to get a real person to sit for the picture, as the public was tired of these idealized types of female beauty. But the trouble started over who was to own the original pastel. It developed that each partner had started the idea from a hidden wish to own a portrait of Pearl. They quarreled bitterly. The very existence of the firm was threatened. An old friend of the two families stepped in and effected a reconciliation, but his decision was that the girl must go. It did not look well for two boys of their age—just beginning in business—to have as handsome a woman as that in the office. People might talk.

It was after this—some time after—that Pearl took the place with the Encyclopedia company. Her record began to tell against her. Everyone wanted to know why she changed jobs so often. She thought she had learned her lesson—not to beam, not to be friendly, not to do anyone favors. She had made up her mind to stay with the Encyclopedia forever. She had had no hint of danger. She hardly knew the third vice president by sight—someone in the office had told her a silly story about his crying one day, but she hadn't even believed it. And now she had lost another job—and in July, too, when jobs are hard to find.

Heretofore she had always gone docilely. But now she felt she could bear it no longer—she must tell someone what she thought.

It was four o'clock on a hot summer afternoon, and round the board-room table the members were saying "aye" and "no" and "I so move," while their minds were occupied with the questions that do occupy the mind at such times—golf and suburban trains, and whether huckleberry pie in hot weather hadn't been a mistake—when the glass door opened and a beautiful girl came in like a hurricane. She had evidently been talking for some seconds when she entered. She was saying, "——are just terrible. I want to tell you gentlemen, now that I have you together, that I think men are just terrible." She had a curious voice, deep and a little rough, more like a boy's than a woman's, yet a voice which when you once knew Pearl you remembered with affection. "This is the fourth job I've lost because men have no self-control. I do my work. I don't even speak to any of you—I'd like to—I'm human, but I don't dare any more. I attend to business, there's no fault found with my work—but I've got to go because some man or other can't work in the office with me. Why not? Because he has no self-control—and not ashamed of it—not ashamed, that's what shocks me. Why, if a girl found she couldn't do her work because there was a good-looking man in the office, she'd die rather than admit she was so silly. But what does a man do? He goes whining to the president to get the poor girl dismissed. There it is! I have to go!"

And so on, and so on. The board was so astonished at her entrance, at the untrammeled way in which she was striding up and down, digging her heels into the rug and flinging her arms about as she talked, that they were like people stunned. They turned their eyes with relief to Mr. Bunner, who came hurrying in behind her.

"Miss Leavitt has been dropped," he began, but she cut him short.

"I've been dropped," she said, "because——"

"Will you let me speak?" said Mr. Bunner—a rhetorical question. He meant to speak in any case.

"No," answered Pearl. "Certainly not. Gentlemen, I have been dismissed—I know—because some man in this office has no self-control. I can't identify him, but I have my suspicions." And she cast a dreadful glance at the third vice president. "Why should I go? Why shouldn't he? Crying! Woof! How absurd!"

"Leave the room, Miss Leavitt," said the president; but he weakened the effect of his edict by leaning forward with his hand to his ear so as to catch whatever she was going to say next.