“It is a wonder that I never noticed before how exquisitely beautiful she is,” he murmured to himself, as he passed on and into his office. “Her voice is music mellowed down. Her language so chaste and well chosen. Ah, me! I do not wonder young Legare feared his father might fall in love with such a prodigy. I fear I shall myself. And if I did, what would my sisters say?”
Yes, that is a man’s question all over. They see a lovely face and form—all the heart they have is moved by it. But they ask not “is she good? Is her disposition sweet? Is she pure and stainless?” Only this—“is she rich in worldly lucre? Is she one who can move a star in the fashionable world? Will she be an ornament in my circle of society?”
What ganders men are. There, I’ve said it, and I mean it.
Hattie paused over her work when the footsteps of her employer died away on her ear. He had not before spoken to her a dozen times in the two years or more of her employment there. His orders and directions always came through the foreman hitherto; and when he spoke to a hand he was not in the habit of using a prefix to the name of that hand. To her he had said Miss Hattie. The foreman always called her Hattie—nothing more—and she was used to it. Some girls would have been pleased at this mark of preference. Not so our heroine. She knew enough of the cold heartlessness of the world to look with distrust upon any advances made by those who were above her in position or fortune.
A sigh broke from her lips, and she almost wished she was back at her sewing-bench at four dollars a week, with no one aware of her talents as a linguist; though her advanced wages would add much to her comfort and enable her to add to her small savings.
She bent again to her labor, and sought in it and its perplexities, refuge from all other thoughts, and she had indeed enough to think of in setting those mixed up pages right. No one else in the bindery could have done it. It was a job which the foreman had laid aside as hopeless, until the late discovery of her talent.
And now he came to her to see how she was getting forward. In reply to his question she said:
“One volume is there, sir, with every page in its place, and ready for the sewing-bench. It is slow work, for the pages are badly mixed and torn up. But I am doing it as fast as I can.”
“Fast enough, in all reason, Hattie,” said Mr. Jones. “You are on wages—or salary, rather, now, and not on piece work. So you need not drive yourself.”
“Salary will make no difference in my industry, Mr. Jones. I shall ever strive my best to devote every moment of working time to the benefit of my employers.”