Merton sprang up, and there was more enthusiasm in his eyes than had seemed possible "You will? But I don't need that much——"
"Then use the surplus to live on."
So the Merton affair was straightened away in a manner which left Dave more at peace with his conscience. But another event, much more dramatic and far-reaching in its effects upon his life, was already ripe for the enacting.
Business conditions had necessitated unwonted economy in the office affairs of Conward & Elden, as a result of which many old employees had been laid off, and others had been replaced by cheaper and less experienced labour. Stenographers who had been receiving a hundred dollars a month could not readily bring themselves to accept fifty, and some of them had to make way for new girls, fresh from the business colleges. Such a new girl was Gladys Wardin; pretty, likeable, inexperienced. Her country home had offered no answer to her ambitions, and she had come to the city with the most dangerous equipment a young woman can carry—an attractive face and an unsophisticated confidence in the goodness of humanity. Conward had been responsible for her position in the office, and Dave had given little thought to her, except to note that she was a willing worker and of comely appearance.
Returning to the office one Saturday evening Dave found Miss Wardin making up a bundle of paper, pencils, and carbon paper. She was evidently in high spirits, and he smilingly asked if she intended working at home over Sunday.
"Oh, didn't Mr. Conward tell you?" she answered, as though surprised that the good news had been kept a secret. "He is going to spend a day or two at one of the mountain hotels, and I am to go along to do his correspondence. Isn't it just lovely? I have so wanted to go to the mountains, but never felt that I could afford it. And now I can combine business with pleasure."
The smile died out of Dave's eyes, and his face became more set and stern than she had ever seen it. "Why, what's the matter, Mr. Elden?" she exclaimed. "Is anything wrong?"
He found it hard to meet her frank, unsuspecting eyes; hard to draw back the curtains of the world so much that those eyes would never again be quite so frank and unsuspecting.… "Miss Wardin," he said, "did Conward tell you that?"
"What? About going to the mountains? Of course. He said he was taking some work with him, and he wondered if I would mind going along to do it, and he would pay the expenses, and—and——"
There was a quick hard catch in her voice, and she seized Elden's arm violently. Her eyes were big and round; her pretty face had gone suddenly white.