Selina had slowed her steps as she came to the open door. Within the office old Jerry was bringing out ledgers, she had a general idea you called 'em ledgers, or daybooks, she'd heard somewhere of daybooks too. And as he placed these on one of the sloping desks and shuffled out of the way, she saw her father leaning against the other desk and talking to, why, so it was, he was talking with Cousin Willoughby Tomlinson!
They had not seen her yet, and something made her stop where she was outside the doorway.
Perhaps it was the little hand wave of her father, which was quietly eloquent. "Thank you for coming to me, Willoughby. A little counseling with somebody of one's own family at a time like this is a relief."
Somebody of his own family! She liked that! This dear, mistaken Papa! He was talking on. "Yes, it's the end of things here for me, I'm afraid. I've lost my only worth-while agencies. I daresay they're right about it. I'm fogy and they want a hustler to represent 'em for a change. The question is—and I want your counsel about it, Jerry's getting out the books for us—can I make it a wind-up in any possible way, or is it going to have to be an assignment?"
Selina turned and hurried back through the long aisle between the oily machines. Her heart beat cruelly, but the rest of her, thoughts, feelings, body itself, was numb. She went down the worn stairway and came out into the dankness of the street.
They had not seen her, her father and Cousin Willoughby. She was glad of that. What would have been the use? It would have disturbed them in their talk and upset her father, and she knew now what she'd come to ask without his having to tell her.
It was early. She still had part of the time she had allowed for her talk with him. Certainly carfare was to be considered. She'd walk home, walk and think.
Think? Think of what? She knew! Think how if she had been a poor man's son where she was a poor man's daughter, that son would have been prepared and shaped by every condition and circumstance to take care of himself. A son long ago would have been at work.
Just what then is expected of poor men's daughters by the world they live in and are to exist by? What?
The answer came to her with staggering suddenness and illuminating clarity as she never had grasped it before. A truth is a truism and slips through the consciousness glibly until one discovers it for oneself. Another illuminating discovery! Then it is mighty and will prevail!