Mr. Kipps sent especially for Jeannette on her first morning. She was nervous and her pencil trembled a little as she scribbled down her notes. She found his dictation extremely difficult to take; he hesitated, paused a long time to think of the word he wanted, corrected himself, asked her to repeat what he had said, or to scratch out what she had written and to go back and read her notes to a point where he could recommence. But he seemed pleased when she brought him the finished letters.
“Very good, Miss Sturgis,—very good indeed,” he said without enthusiasm, tapping his pursed lips with the tip of his penholder as he scanned her work.
She was jubilant. She looked for Roy; she was eager to tell him what Mr. Kipps had said. But he was not at his desk as she passed through the advertising department, nor was he waiting for her—as she hoped—when five o’clock came and she started home.
Well, she was satisfied,—she had gotten just what she wanted,—she would soon make herself indispensable.... Mr. Kipps was really a lovely man, although one would never suspect it from his nervous manner. She felt a sudden assurance she was going to be very happy.
Roy found her again in her sweetest, kindest mood that evening. They began at once to discuss everyone in the entire organization of the company from the President, himself, down to Bertram, the little Jew office boy, who was inclined to be fresh. The publishing house had suddenly become their entire world and everyone in it was either friend or foe.
“I hope I make good,” sighed Jeannette.
“Make good?” repeated her lover indignantly. “Of course, you’ll make good. Don’t I know how good you are? Why, say, Janny dear, you’ve got that bunch of girls skinned a mile!”
It was soon evident to Jeannette that Roy was right. The next day she made a point of glancing at some of Miss Foster’s and Miss Lopez’s letters; she noted two errors in the former’s, and the latter’s were rubbed and full of erasures; the letters, themselves, were poorly spaced and the sheets in several instances were far from being clean. She was genuinely shocked at such slovenliness. They would not have tolerated it at the school for a minute! The girls who had been with her under Beardsley had done better work than that!.... She paused over the thought and smiled. It was funny now to think of dear old Roy as the Mr. Beardsley who had once filled her with such awe and in fear of whose displeasure she had actually trembled.
§ 7
Her satisfaction with her new position found utter completeness when on her first Saturday morning her pay envelope reached her, and she discovered she was to receive fifteen dollars a week. It was the last drop in her felicity. She flung herself into her work with all the eagerness of an intense young nature. In turn she took dictation from Mr. Featherstone, Miss Reubens, Mr. Olmstead, the auditor, and young Mr. Cavendish, who edited Corey’s Commentary. Everyone seemed to like her. Miss Reubens, having tried the new stenographer, thereafter invariably asked for her, and while this was gratifying in its way, Jeannette would have willingly foregone the distinction. Miss Reubens was not a pleasing personality for whom to work; she referred to Jeannette as “the new girl,” treated her like a machine, and kept her sitting idly beside her desk while she sorted papers or carried on long conversations at the telephone. She was a high-strung, perpetually agitated person, given to complaining a great deal, undoubtedly overworked, but finding consolation in pitying herself and in bemoaning her hard lot. Jeannette recognized in her the lady with the twisted, sour mouth who had been inspecting photographs the day she first came to the office.