So we became good friends. Yet I never felt really intimate with her, as I had with Hillary, and when I tried to step past a certain line she had her own way of keeping me off, not haughtily or pertly, but like a lady who knew how people of the great world, where I had never been, behaved to one another. One day, I remember, I was fool enough to send her a little fancy purse with a gold eagle in it, and a line saying that it was time for me to make restitution, or something of the sort. My gift came back quick enough, with a clever little note tucked inside, saying she couldn't let me admit that I had taken her purse. It was a good lesson for me.
When Mr. Dround returned in the fall she reported to him for work, and I was not altogether sorry. I had plenty of chances to see her outside of the office now, and I was desperately busy. In a few days, however, when I happened to be in Mr. Dround's office on some matter, he began to talk about Miss Gentles. Peters had told him that I had had her as my stenographer during his absence, and Mr. Dround would like to have me continue, as she wasn't adapted to his needs. Then he spoke of her people, and how he and Mrs. Dround had held them in the highest esteem, and had tried to do something for this girl. But there had seemed to be nothing that she was really fitted to do.
So we began again our work together, only it was worse; for her fashionable friends were back in the city now, and they kept inviting her out to parties and one thing and another, until she was too sleepy to do her work in the morning and was rather irregular. Then she was ill, off for a fortnight. I had Peters hire me another stenographer, a man, and Miss Gentles still drew her pay. Peters winked at me when I suggested that he needn't mention the fact of her absence in his report. I suppose, if I had stopped to think of it, I should have considered it more businesslike of her to quit her society and parties when she found they were interfering with her work. It was human, though, that she should want to get a little fun out of her life, and not lose sight altogether of the gay world where they have time to amuse themselves. And a pretty woman like her could hardly be expected to take stenography in a stock-yards office seriously.
Well, I missed her more and more, especially as I couldn't see her now that she was ill, and had to content myself with nice little notes of thanks for the flowers and fruit I sent. She came back at last, looking weak and droopy, for the first time rather hopeless, as if she saw that she wasn't fitted for the job and couldn't keep up with her friends, either. I felt very sorry for her. She wasn't made for work—any one could see that—and it was a cruel shame to let her boggle on with it. Just then I had to go to Texas on business; when I got back a week or so later, Peters told me that Miss Gentles had left five days before. A cold little note on my desk said good-by, and thanked me for my kindness to her—never a word of explanation.
I was so upset that I didn't wait to open my letters, but called a cab and started for the aunt's to find out what was the matter. It was just as well I had been in a hurry, for in another ten minutes Miss Gentles would have been on her way to Louisville, and it would have taken a week to hunt out the small place in Kentucky where she was going. Her trunk was packed, and she was sitting with her aunt in the large, ugly parlor, waiting for the expressman to come. When I walked in, following the servant, she didn't draw back her veil, but merely stood up and touched fingers with me. I saw that something was so wrong that it had to be made right at once, with no time to spare.
"You will kindly let me speak to Miss Gentles alone," I said to the aunt, who was inclined to stick. She went out of the room ungraciously.
"Now," I said, taking the girl's hand and looking through her veil into her eyes, "what is the matter? Tell me."
Her eyes were large and moist, and her lips quivered. But she shut her teeth down hard and said stiffly: "Nothing whatever, Mr. Harrington. You are very kind to come to see me before I leave."
"You aren't going to put me off with any such smooth answer as that," I said, "or you will have my company all the way you're going, wherever it may be. Tell me the straight truth, and all of it."
She began to laugh at my bluffing words, and ended with a nervous sob. After a while I learned the whole story. It seems that the man I employed talked out in the office about how he did all my work, and while I was South one of the "lady" stenographers had said something to Miss Gentles—a something she would not tell me. So she got up and took her leave, and knowing that her old aunt wouldn't want her around if she had no job, she had written some cousins in Kentucky and was going to them.