The stool was not an enticing seat, but not dreaming that any offense was intended I never dreamed of taking offense. Going over I perched myself on the stool and busied myself trying to learn how to manipulate a little machine used to make out checks. This moving of my chair was repeated the following day along with numerous other acts of petty spite. Having always been cordially received I did not at all understand.
It took days for me even to suspect that I was not a welcomed addition to the department. Turpin was, of course, the man whose acts aroused this suspicion. His method of instructing me had, from the first, seemed to me peculiar. When pretending to show me how to make out the reports sent from the loan department to various officers of the bank, he would be laboriously adding or subtracting a few figures, then suddenly he would throw himself back in his chair, heave a sigh of extreme exasperation, and shout at me.
Though this puzzled and embarrassed me from the first, I did not for a moment think it was done with malice aforethought. Being repeated so often, I finally began to question myself—why should I, when not allowed to take any part in the work in hand, be howled at? Now, I am not quite a fool. It did not require a great length of time for me to discover that Turpin’s fits of exasperation and loud talking only occurred when Mr. Morton, Mr. Hartley, or some one of the vice-presidents of the bank was in hearing.
On my inquiring, quite casually, one day of Turpin what he thought of Mr. Morton’s idea of putting women in the positions left vacant by men going to the front, I got what he would have called “a line” on his behavior.
“We all know that business has got to make out with women somehow,” he replied patronizingly. “This bank along with the rest. What we complain about is Morton’s giving us an untrained woman. You’ve never had any office training.”
“None,” I agreed. “I told Mr. Morton I had had no experience in office work. He thought that being a college woman——”
“College!” he exclaimed contemptuously. “What’s that good for? I’d have gone to college if I hadn’t known it would be throwing away time. As soon as I finished the high school—graduated, of course—I came here.”
“How long have you been in the loan department?” I inquired.
“More than two years. You can take it from me it’s a man-size job. No woman, much less an untrained woman, can swing it.”
“The work is very hard,” I agreed, with a deep and insincere sigh. I thought then, and I have never changed my opinion, that a conscientious girl of sixteen could do all that I ever saw him attempt.