Graves looked serious.
“My girls are constantly coming to me now with requests to be allowed to finish their work at irregular and unauthorized hours, instead of keeping up to the standard output required by my department. They assert that a girl in Mr. Allen’s department was allowed to do this, and they had never understood that employment in his department carried any special privileges. I went to Mr. Allen about this. I pointed out to him that it affected the morale of my girls to see one of his people favored, but he told me he could do nothing. He said it was not his idea, and—”
“All right!” said Graves, suddenly getting up, with a flushed face and a constrained smile. “I—very likely you’re right, Miss Kelly. I’ll—I’ll make some adjustment that’ll suit you.”
“Please don’t consider suiting me,” said Miss Kelly. “It’s the morale of the office, Mr. Graves.”
And she went away like Pallas Athene from a battleground.
I honestly pitied Graves, he was so wretched.
“Well, you know,” he said, “she’s right. It does upset the routine, and so on; but, hang it all, that girl simply couldn’t stand being discharged! She has pluck enough, and all that, but she’s sensitive. She’s too darned sensitive entirely. I wish to Heaven she’d picked out some other office to start in! She’s got some fool idea in her head that it’s the first job that makes or breaks you. It’s no use pointing out her faults to her; she knows ’em. She’s trying to overcome them; but she’s just naturally slow.”
He tried her at filing. Not for long, though; the tumult was too great. He tried her at bookkeeping; but she herself admitted that figures were not her forte.
“There must be something that girl can do, or can be taught to do!” he cried in despair. “Everybody has some aptitude, and she’s not stupid. She can talk well about books and so on.”
“Do you talk to her, Graves?” I asked. “Much?”