The following morning when Ruth received the mail her eye at once caught the R.G. Wing Mortgage Company in the upper left hand corner of one of the letters. Eagerly she tore it open. Disappointment, black and hideous, rose from the ruins of a shattered hope and obscured the sunlight with a cloud of despair. How could she ever stand so much ill fortune! She was almost driven to desperation. The note read:
"Dear Miss Babcock:
"I regret to inform you that I cannot use you as stenographer.
"Yours truly,
"R.G. Wing."
Ruth rushed to her room and her tense and overwrought nervous system found relief in tears—nature's safety valve.
Charles Wilson went to the office of R.G. Wing Mortgage Company for the purpose of securing a mortgage for one of his clients.
"How are you, Mr. Wing. How is business?"
"I am very well, Mr. Wilson, but I am away behind with my work. My stenographer quit a week ago and the work has been piling up ever since, waiting for her successor, whom I have not yet been able to find. I thought the other day that I had found a peach of a stenographer, but later I learned that she isn't just what she should be."
"Character bad?" queried Wilson.
"If it isn't bad she seems to be doing all she can to make it bad. I understand that she keeps bad company."
"Who is the girl?"