The loan clerk, Mr. Hartley, and his first assistant, Dennis Hoolagan, sat facing each other at the larger of the two flat-topped desks. At the smaller flat top, which was in one corner, sat a young man, Tom Turpin, tall, blond, and carefully groomed. In an adjoining compartment, at a large table, was a still younger man, Dick Ware. And in yet another adjoining compartment was the stenographer and typist, whose name no one considered worth mentioning. Mr. Hartley and Dick Ware, I soon learned, were of American stock. Hoolagan was a son of Irish immigrants, while Turpin’s parents had come as immigrants from that country from which Americans get their coachmen and butlers, but never their cooks.
I have already stated how I chanced to go to the T. Z. Trust Company. When I proposed to release a man for service I did not for a moment imagine that I was doing anything remarkable. Indeed it seemed a very small thing to offer my country my untrained services since all my men-folks had enlisted and were prepared to give their lives. Because the press and men and women in public life were urging American women to follow the example of the women of England and France, step into the working world and release men for service at the front, I did it. While I did not expect to be commended, neither did I so much as dream that any fellow employee would do his best to render my position unpleasant.
That is exactly what Tom Turpin and Dennis Hoolagan did attempt—to render my position in the loan department of the T. Z. Trust Company intolerable.
On that first day, the ceremony of introductions over, Mr. Hartley explained that I was to learn to do the work done by Dick Ware and Tom Turpin. These young men, Mr. Hartley informed me, had enlisted, and might be called at any time. Hoolagan had been drafted, but because of a physical defect would not be taken by the first draft. He, Mr. Hartley, then placed a chair for me at Turpin’s elbow. I was to begin by learning Turpin’s work.
Never in my life had I felt even a slight interest in stocks and bonds. Now I found myself sitting cheek by jowl with a ticker. My chair was so close to the thing that the tape got the habit of running down my collar instead of into the basket. Any one can judge how much at home I felt.
Even that first day I had a feeling of discomfort that I had never experienced in any of my former positions. My memory of the forenoon of that, my first day, is of a blurred puzzle—there were so many things the meaning of which I had not the faintest conception. On my return from lunch I found only Turpin and Hoolagan in the office. My chair was nowhere in sight. I placed my hand on Mr. Hartley’s chair.
“Better not do that!” Turpin cried. “Hart don’t like anybody to sit in his chair.”
“Who has moved my chair?” I questioned. No answer. Both men appeared to be too engrossed by their work to hear. After a few minutes, puzzled but thinking perhaps it was intended as a joke, I asked: “Where am I to sit?”
Another wait.
“There’s a stool,” Turpin told me, pointing over his shoulder to a high stool at the bookkeeper’s desk in the far corner.