“Yes, sir, I returned it to him early this morning and suggested that he take care of the matter for you.” As she spoke she felt the color rushing to her face.
Corey’s black brows came together in an annoyed frown. He cleared his throat with a little impatient cough, and jerked at his mustache.
“I wish, Miss Sturgis,—I wish you would not be quite so officious.”
Jeannette squared herself to the criticism, and stood very erect, returning his look.
“I thought Mr. Kipps could take care of the matter, without bothering you further,” she said, beginning to tremble.
There was silence in the room. The girl’s defiant figure, tall and straight, confronted the man at the desk, and the dark frown that bore down upon her. She was very beautiful as she stood there, with the warm color tinging her olive-hued cheeks, her eyes clear and unwavering, her head flung back, her small hands shut, resolute, unflinching. Perhaps Corey saw it, perhaps it occurred to him that she showed a fine courage, bearding him in this fashion, facing him with such spirit, acknowledging her high-handedness yet defending it. As he considered the matter, it came to him that she was right. Kipps was perfectly capable of taking care of this insurance business himself.
What was passing in the man’s mind the girl never knew. Slowly she saw the scowl drift away, the stern face relax. He swung his chair toward the window and contemplated the horizon. The sun was setting over the Jersey shore, and the glow of a red sky was reflected on his face.
“Very well,” he said at last. It was ungracious, it was curt, but there was nothing more. There was no dismissal. The girl waited a few minutes longer, then turned and quitted the room.
There were errors—serious errors—for which she was accountable. She incorrectly addressed envelopes in the hurry of dispatching them, she mixed letters and sent them to the wrong people, she mislaid certain correspondence that upset the whole office, and she kept the great Zeit Heitmüller, painter and sculptor,—of whom she had never heard,—waiting for more than an hour in the reception room, though Mr. Corey had begged him to call. Mr. Featherstone criticized her sharply when she neglected sending off some advertising copy after Mr. Corey had O.K.’d it, and she was aware that Mr. Olmstead complained of her in great annoyance when she returned to him an inventory he had prepared after it had lain four days on Mr. Corey’s desk. At times she felt herself an absolute failure, and at others knew she was steadily gaining ground in the confidence and regard of the man she served. There were hard days, days when everything went wrong, when everybody was cross, when it was close and suffocating in the office, and whatever one touched felt gritty with the grime of the dusty wind that swept the streets. There were days when Corey was short and critical, when whatever Jeannette did, seemed to irritate him. A dozen times during a morning or afternoon she might be near to tears and would rehearse in her mind the words in which she would tell him that since she could not do the work to satisfy him, he had better find someone else to take her place. There were other days when he chatted with her in the merriest of moods, asked how she was getting along, inquired about herself and her family, looked up smilingly when she stood before his desk to interrupt him, and thanked her for having protected him from some trifling annoyance.
Her heart swelled with pride and satisfaction the first Saturday she tore off a narrow strip from the neat, fat little envelope Miss Travers handed her, and found folded therein two ten-and one five-dollar bills. Twenty-five dollars a week! She rolled the words under her tongue; she liked to hear herself whisper it. “Twenty-five dollars a week!” There were hundreds and hundreds of men who didn’t earn so much, and a vastly larger number of women!