“Knowing how the home has been imposed upon in the past, you will, I am sure, approve my decision,” the matron continued in her calm, competent way. “With so many in it whom we hope to influence to high standards, fair-play forbids that we allow it to be made a free hotel for the convenience of a class who make sport of its object. One bad example spoils a dozen good. I feel very strongly on this subject, doctor.”
“Yes, I know. You always feel strongly.”
No sarcasm showed in his voice or look. His rebuke was the more telling because so quietly put.
“I shall not interfere with your decision in this case so far as concerns the Home. But as pastor of the Church of All Mankind, I do not feel that I should permit generalities to affect my personal interest in cases. Surely ‘all mankind’ includes girlhood, the future of the Nation. Come with me, young lady. I’ll see what we can do for you.”
All within five minutes, Dolores found herself ushered into the private office of the autocrat of the institution whose doors had been closing upon her.
That there was a crack in her cup of content had come to be a belief of Dolores Trent. From her earliest remembrance there always had seemed to be more or less of seepage. Nevertheless, as protégé of Dr. Alexander Willard—his pet charity, he called her—she felt that the waste should cease.
The Church of All Mankind was a granite pile which did proud the outward religious show of its parishioners. From a height it returned serenely the troubled gaze of the Hudson. Its lawns suggested that each blade of grass was especially endowed. Behind the auditorium, with its wide-welcome doors, arched memorial windows and statued niches for the more generous benefactors, had been erected a two-story, utilitarian annex. Of the same stone and general architectural lines as the church proper, this contained, in addition to lecture, board and office rooms, the pastor’s study.
Here Dolores had been installed on the day of her “rescue” from the East Side home which ranked first among the charities of All Mankind. Here she soon had learned to manipulate a typewriter with sufficient speed to take letters from dictation and prepare large-type pulpit copies of the sensational sermons for which Dr. Willard was widely known. Here, in brief, she had mastered the preliminaries of a secretaryship.
Despite frequent praise of her aptitude, her grasp of English and a natural facility in the creation of oratorical effects, she somehow could not cease to regard her employment as providential and the reverend doctor as her personal Providence. “The lower they sink, the higher we lift them”—that had been his comment on refusing to hear her attempted explanation of the shop scandal. Neither would he recognize any connection between his initiative in her behalf and the fact that the John Cabots were hereditary members of his congregation.