“Oh, yes,” Jeannette sighed wearily, “it’s plenty,--only I want--I want to earn some money myself. I need clothes, and I ought to have everything for a year, at least!”
September passed, and October came with a tingle of autumn, and an early touch of yellow, drifting leaves. Jeannette missed the chance of an excellent position in the manager’s office of a large suit and cloak manufacturer by no more than a minute or two. She saw the other applicant enter the office just ahead of her, and was presently told the place was filled. The girl who had preceded her was Miss Flannigan!
There was another position in a lawyer’s office for which she eagerly applied. She heard the salary was twenty-five dollars a week, but when she was interviewed, and it was discovered she had no knowledge of legal phraseology, she was rejected.
Desperate and discouraged, she was obliged to listen in the evenings to Roy’s glowing praise of his new associates, to detailed accounts of small happenings in the office, and gossip between desks. She learned all about Mr. Featherstone, his devoted and adoring wife, his small, crippled son, his own good nature, and hearty joviality. She heard a great deal about Humphrey Stubbs and Walt Chase. Stubbs, she gathered, was already Roy’s enemy. He had made several efforts to discredit the newcomer, and was on the lookout for things about which to criticize him to his chief. Walt Chase, on the contrary, was amiable and inclined to be very friendly. Walt had been married less than a year, lived in Hackensack, and his wife had just had a baby.
Jeannette listened enviously, with despair in her heart, when she heard about Miss Anastasia Reubens, the editor of _The Wheel of Fortune_. That Miss Reubens was forty-five and had spent all the working years of her life on the editorial staff of one magazine or another made little difference to Jeannette. She hated to inquire about her, but her curiosity was too great.
“What do you suppose she gets?” she asked Roy with a casual air.
“Oh, I don’t know; perhaps fifty or sixty a week. I’m sure I haven’t an idea. None of the folks down there get high salaries; everyone is underpaid. Mr. Corey hasn’t more than got the business started. He only began it five years ago. He tells us, we’ve got to wait with him, until the money begins to come in, and then we’ll all share in the profits.”