"But I could learn quickly."
"Quite so. But to be frank," said Mr. Cleever, "I have brought my private secretary with me from Newark." New kings make new courts.
"Yes, sir," said Georgia in a low voice.
"I will assign you to the auditing department for the present."
"Yes, sir."
She felt many eyes upon her and her cheeks were burning as she walked down the long room carrying her business belongings to a narrow flat-top which the young auditor pointed out to her. It was next the inside wall.
The color came to her face in waves as she passed Miss Gerson's desk and she had a furious sensation that her habit of blushing was damnable. Why, she asked herself angrily, couldn't she at least appear calm in unpleasant situations!
Her new work was less interesting, more mechanical. There were rows on rows of figures in it, and much technical accounting jargon. She ceased to throw in overtime to the company, quitting sharply each night on the dot of five thirty. On pay night she found, as she had feared, that her salary had been standardized. She received the regular class A stenographer's $15 instead of the private secretary's $20.
On Tuesday of her second week in the auditing department, Mr. Cleever sent for her. Hoping devoutly that the new secretary had sprained his wrist (Mr. Cleever's secretary was a young man, Mrs. Cleever having been a stenographer herself), Georgia took her notebook.
But Mr. Cleever wanted instead to inform her that the system of bookkeeping whereof she was the apparent beneficiary disaccorded with his notions of system.