“You appear to be a very advanced young woman,” he remarked. “I am a little surprised—I had hardly thought my father would select young women of your type as his confidential secretaries.”
“Private stenographer,” she corrected. “A little extra side on a title is neither here nor there. Well, I will admit that I rather took your father’s breath at times; he discharged me so often it became a habit, but we grew to have a sort of tacit understanding that that was just his way of blowing off steam. You see, I did his work, and I did it right. I never lost my head when he got into a temper; I could always read my notes even after he had spent most of the day in death grips with some business rival. You see, I wasn’t afraid of him, not the least bit. And I’m not afraid of you.”
“I don’t believe you are,” Grant admitted. “You are a remarkable woman. I think we shall get along all right if you are able to distinguish between independence and bravado.” He turned to his desk, then suddenly looked up again. He was homesick for someone he could talk to frankly.
“I don’t mind telling you,” he said abruptly, “that the deference which is being showered upon me around this institution gives me a good deal of a pain. I’ve been accustomed to working with men on the same level. They took their orders from me, and they carried them out, but the older hands called me by my first name, and any of them swore back when he thought he had occasion. I can’t fit in to this ‘Yes sir,’ ‘No sir,’ ‘Very good, sir,’ way of doing business. It doesn’t ring true.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “There’s too much servility in it. And yet one may pay these courtesies and not be servile. I always ‘sir’d’ your father, and he knew I did it because I wanted to, not because I had to. And I shall do the same with you once we understand each other. The position I want to make clear is this: I don’t admit that because I work for you I belong to a lower order of the human family than you do, and I don’t admit that, aside from the giving of faithful service, I am under any obligation to you. I give you my labor, worth so much; you pay me; we’re square. If we can accept that as an understanding I’m ready to begin work now; if not, I’m going out to look for another job.”
“I think we can accept that as a working basis,” he agreed.
She produced notebook and pencil. “Very well, SIR. Do you wish to dictate?”
The selection of a place to call home was a matter demanding Grant’s early attention. He discussed it with Mr. Jones.
“Of course you will take memberships in some of the better clubs,” the lawyer had suggested. “It’s the best home life there is. That is why it is not to be recommended to married men; it has a tendency to break up the domestic circle.”
“But it will cost more than I can afford.”