Miss Gere was sighing over Mabel, but Mabel did not guess that. She would not have believed such a thing possible.
She did not like the manner of the office boy, however. It hurt her pride. When she reached the door of the office, it was deserted excepting for Jimmie who, with his face pressed close to the dingy window pane, was watching something in the street below. In a corner near the door a temporary cloak-room had been made by running up two flimsy partitions. They were only six feet high but there was a place to fix one's hair at a little glass and keep coats and hats out of the dust. Mabel tiptoed quickly into this haven and decided to wait there until someone else came in. She sat down noiselessly on the rickety chair but immediately she heard steps and voices. Before she could rise she heard a sentence that froze her. She forgot that listening is a despicable trick. She just sat transfixed! The voice was that of the Editor and he was evidently talking to Miss Gere about her, because he said:
"Why, today I found a poem on my desk, with a letter. Why, Miss Gere, that kid ought to be home under her mother's wing, and here she is trying to be sophisticated, and writing drivel that would shame a child six years old!"
Miss Gere laughed.
"Don't be so severe, Chief," she begged.
"I am not severe!" he said savagely. "You are not fair with her. If that girl has no more feeling for her mother and no appreciation of her brother—Why, do you know that youngster sleeps outside her door every night to take care of her, for fear someone might frighten her? She needs a good scare I should say. Sleeps there on the floor!"
Miss Gere interrupted. "Not quite as bad as that," she said. "I happen to know that there is a settee there."
"Well, what's a settee for a growing boy?" growled the Chief. "Well, if she has no affection, no gratitude and evidently no natural love for her own people and only an ordinary brain, what's the use of bothering with her? I don't want to see her hanging around. I know she is under your charge, Miss Gere, but I wish you would let me fire her. I want to tell her to go home and ask her mother to forgive her, and see if she can get a little sense into her head, and try to live and act according to her years. Where in time did she get such notions?"
"She reads a good deal, I believe," said Miss Gere. "Cheap magazines and silly novels."
"Well, fire her! As far as I go, the experiment is over!" He walked over to his desk. "When she comes in tomorrow, send her to me. I will at least have the comfort of telling her what I think of this poem. You will hear the truth about your imagined talents for once, Miss Mabel Brewster." He slammed down the top of his desk and stalked out without saying good-night.