§ 3
It was on a hot Saturday afternoon in July when no one but themselves were in the office, that Jeannette told Mr. Corey about Roy. She had not seen quite so much of Roy lately; he had been away on a business trip, and Horatio Stephens had asked him to spend his fortnight’s vacation with himself and family at Asbury Park. He had written her letters full of endearments and underscored assertions of love, and had returned to plead eagerly that she set the day for the wedding and begin to plan with him how and where they should live. His earnestness made her realize she could temporize no longer.
“It isn’t that I don’t care for him,” she said to Mr. Corey; “it’s just that I don’t want to get married, I guess.”
The windows were open and a gentle hot wind stirred the loose papers on the desk. A lazy rumble of traffic rose from the street, punctuated now and then by the shrill voices of children in the Square, and the merry jingle of a hurdy-gurdy.
“You mustn’t trifle with your happiness, Miss Sturgis,” Corey said, pulling at his mustache thoughtfully. “You know this is all very well here for a time, but you must think of the future.”
Jeannette stared out of the window and for some minutes there was silence; she spoke presently with knitted brows.
“Oh, I’ve gone over it and over it, again and again, and it seems more than I can do to give up my independence and the fun of living my own life just yet. I—I like Mr. Beardsley; I think we’d be happy together. He’s devoted to me, and he’s most amiable,”—she glanced with a smile at her employer’s face. “My mother and my sister are eager to have me marry him, but I just can’t—can’t bring myself to give up my work and my life here to substitute matrimony.”
“No consideration for me, my dear girl, ought to influence you. I’d be sorry to lose you, of course; you’re the best secretary I ever had, and I’d be hard put to it to find anyone who could begin to fill your place even remotely. But you mustn’t think I couldn’t manage; I’d find somebody. Your duty is to yourself and living your own life.”
“It isn’t that, Mr. Corey. It’s the work that I love; I don’t want to give it up,—the excitement and the fun of it. It’s a thousand times more exhilarating than cooking and dish-washing.... And then there’s the question of finances, which, it seems to me, I’m bound to consider. Mr. Beardsley’s getting twenty-five and I’m getting twenty-five; that’s fifty dollars a week we earn, but if I marry him, we both would have to live on just his salary.”
“Yes,—that’s very true,” the man admitted.