That the good Mr. Gardiner saw at once. For to his thrifty, suburban soul the situation of a girl of fifteen with large prospects in a third-class rooming-house was truly deplorable. The dignities and proprieties of life were being outraged: it might affect the character of the trust company should it become known....
Rising at last from the dusty sofa where he had placed his large person for this talk, the trust officer said kindly,—
"We must consider what is best to be done, my girl. Can you come to the bank to see me next Monday?"
Adelle saw no reason why she should not go to see him Monday, as high school still seemed impossible with the house on her hands.
"Come in, then, Monday morning!" And the trust officer went homewards to confide his perplexity to his wife as trust officers sometimes do. It was a queer business, his. As trust officer he had once gone out to some awful place in Dakota to take charge of the remains of a client who had got himself shot in a brawl, and brought the body back and buried it decently in a New England graveyard with his ancestors. He had advised young widows how to conduct themselves so that they should not be exposed to the wiles of rapacious men. Once even he had counseled matrimony to a client who was difficult to control and had approved, unofficially, of her selection of a mate. A good many of the social burdens of humanity came upon his desk in the course of the day's business, and he was no more inhuman than the next man. He was a father of a respectable family in the neighboring suburb of Chester. His habit was naturally to hunt for the proper formula for each situation as it arose and to apply this formula conscientiously. According to Mr. Gardiner, the duty of trust companies to society consisted in applying suitable formulas to the human tangles submitted to them by their clients. And in the present case Mrs. Gardiner suggested the necessary formula.
"Why don't you send the girl to a good boarding-school? You say she's fifteen and will have money."
"Yes,—some money, perhaps a good deal," her husband replied. Even in the bosom of his family, the trust officer was guarded in statement.
"How much?" Mrs. Gardiner demanded.
"What difference does it make how much, so long as we can pay her school bills?"
"It makes all the difference in the world!" the wife replied, with the superior tone of wisdom. "It makes the difference whether you send her to St. Catherine's or Herndon Hall."