“We need another selling man,” declared Mr. Seagraves.

“We do,” nodded Farnsworth. “I have my eye on several we can get if Pendleton doesn’t develop.”

“That’s good. Ready, Miss Winthrop.”

The thing Miss Winthrop had to decide that night was whether she should allow Mr. Pendleton to stumble on to his doom or take it upon herself to warn him. She was forced to carry that problem home with her, and eat supper with it, and give up her evening to it. Whenever she thought of it from that point of view, she grew rebellious and lost her temper. There was not a single sound argument why her time and her thought should be thus monopolized by Mr. Pendleton.

She had already done what she could for him, and it had not amounted to a row of pins. She 134 had told him to go to bed at night, so that he could get up in the morning fresh, and he had not done it. She had advised him to hustle whenever he was on an errand for Farnsworth, and of late he had loafed. She had told him to keep up to the minute on the current investments the house was offering, and to-day he probably could not have told even the names of half of them. No one could argue that it was her duty to keep after him every minute––as if he belonged to her.

And then, in spite of herself, her thoughts went back to the private office of Mr. Seagraves. She recalled the expression on the faces of the two men––an expression denoting only the most fleeting interest in the problem of Mr. Pendleton. If he braced up, well and good; if he did not, then it was only a question of selecting some one else. It was Pendleton’s affair, not theirs.

That was what every one thought except Pendleton himself––who did not think at all, because he did not know. And if no one told him, then he would never know. Some day Mr. Farnsworth would call him into the office 135 and inform him his services were no longer needed. He would not tell him why, even if Don inquired. So, with everything almost within his grasp, Pendleton would go. Of course, he might land another place; but it was no easy thing to find the second opportunity, having failed in the first.

Yet this was all so unnecessary. Mr. Pendleton had in him everything Farnsworth wanted. If the latter could have heard him talk as she had heard him talk, he would have known this. Farnsworth ought to send him out of the office––let him get among men where he could talk. And that would come only if Mr. Pendleton could hold on here long enough. Then he must hold on. He must cut out his late hours and return to his old schedule. She must get hold of him and tell him. But how?

The solution came the next morning. She decided that if she had any spare time during the day she would write him what she had to say. When she saw him drift in from lunch at twenty minutes past one, she took the time without further ado. She snatched a sheet of 136 office paper, rolled it into the machine, snapped the carriage into position, and began.

MR. DONALD PENDLETON,
Care Carter, Rand & Seagraves,
New York, N.Y.

Dear Sir:––

Of course it is none of my business whether you get fired or not; but, even if it isn’t, I like to see a man have fair warning. Farnsworth doesn’t think that way. He gives a man all the rope he wants and lets him hang himself. That is just what he’s doing with you. I had a tip straight from the inside the other day that if you keep on as you have for the last six weeks you will last here just about another month. That isn’t a guess, either; it’s right from headquarters.

For all I know, this is what you want; but if it is, I’d rather resign on my own account than be asked to resign. It looks better, and helps you with the next job. Most men downtown have a prejudice against a man who has been fired.

You needn’t ask me where I got my information, because I won’t tell you. I’ve no business to tell you this much. What you want to remember is that Farnsworth knows every time you get in from lunch twenty minutes late, as you did to-day; and he knows when you get in late in the morning, as you have eleven times now; and he knows when you take an hour and a half for a half-hour errand, as you have seven times; and he 137 knows when you’re in here half-dead, as you’ve been all the time; and he knows what you don’t know about what you ought to know. And no one has to tell him, either. He gets it by instinct.

So you needn’t say no one warned you, and please don’t expect me to tell you anything more, because I don’t know anything more. I am,

Respectfully yours,
SARAH K. WINTHROP.