Occasionally Georgia sat up most of the night with a scared author and an impatient stage director, altering the script of a play after it had flivvered on the opening, and getting out new parts for it.
At first, she and L. Frankland found themselves forced into overtime almost every evening, because the theatrical people were invariably in such a raging hurry to get their work done, vast enterprises apparently hanging upon the rapid, if not the immediate, completion thereof. With growing experience, however, the firm learned to promise impossibilities for the sake of peace, but not to attempt them.
When the orders came in faster than they could handle them, Frankland & Connor jobbed them out again at fifty per cent. Georgia had three or four private stenographers on her list who were glad to pick up a little pin money on their employers' machines after hours. Perhaps in hours, too. She didn't know or care.
At the end of a twelvemonth she had paid off her debts, except the one to Mason, on which she sent interest.
She was also able to employ a woman to help her mother with the housework two afternoons a week.
Early in the firm's second year of existence, L. Frankland came in one Monday morning with a long face, a rare thing for her.
"I want to make a change," she said, "I'm not satisfied. I've been thinking it over. This isn't an impulse."
"A change?"
"Yes."
Georgia was genuinely distressed, because she had grown very fond of Miss Frankland. There was no more cheerful person in the world, she thought, than this dry, twinkling old maid. And she had hoped her feeling was returned. Real friendships were too rare to be tossed away so suddenly.