The assistant secretary of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Destitute had her share of humor. Smiling back at her interlocutor she proceeded to give Hertha's question the thought it deserved.
"Where do you feel that your talent falls short?" she demanded.
"Oh, everywhere," Hertha answered vaguely, and then added, "it's all so confusing, especially when you have to hurry."
"You haven't been at work long enough to be speeded," her adviser answered. "Perhaps they aren't teaching you well."
"The others get ahead." In the answer lurked a hint of tears.
"I don't believe, then," Miss Wood said, weighing her words carefully, "that you will want to be a stenographer; that is, a stenographer whose whole time is taken up with typewriting and dictation. But you can be a secretary with only moderate skill at stenography if you have other qualifications."
"Probably I haven't got them," Hertha murmured.
"I know you have some of them." Miss Wood became emphatic now, she felt on safe ground. "You have an attractive personality. Why, I should try you in my office, if I had one of my own, the first minute I saw you! You would be courteous to all who came in, and discreet; you wouldn't talk about your employer's business when you went home; and," looking about her, "you are orderly. Oh, you have many qualifications." The last words were vague but Miss Wood left her listener cheered and with returned self-respect. Especially was Hertha pleased that a woman, not a smirking man, expressed a desire to employ her if given the opportunity.
Unfortunately, the next day, in her tussle with a business order, she made such a hodge-podge of words that her teacher laughed. That evening she knocked at Mrs. Pickens' door.
She was welcomed cordially to a comfortable seat while her landlady hastily gathered together the bunch of newspapers that she had been looking over and threw them into a corner.