Jeannette applied for and secured the promise of a job in a small upholsterer’s shop in the neighborhood at six dollars a week, and in the face of her firm resolution to accept the offer and go to work on the following Monday morning, Mrs. Sturgis confessed her secret. As she had foreseen, Jeannette had little difficulty in persuading her,--since now she would be compelled to borrow on her store,--to make the amount of her loan fifty dollars additional.
“Why, Mama, I’ll be earning that much a month in ten weeks, and I can pay it back to you in no time.”
“I know--I know, dearie. But I just hate to do it.”
Eventually, she gave way before her daughter’s flood of arguments. It was what she had feared ever since Ralph died; there would be no stopping now the inroads upon her little capital; she saw the beginning of the end.
But Jeannette went triumphantly to school.
After the first few days while she felt herself conspicuous as a new pupil, she began to enjoy herself immensely. The studies fascinated her. Hers was an alert mind and she was unusually intelligent. She had always been regarded as an exceptionally bright student, but she had achieved this reputation with little application. Her school work heretofore had represented merely “lessons” to her; it had never carried any significance. But now she threw herself with all the intensity of her nature upon what seemed to her a vital business. She realized she had only ten weeks in which to master shorthand and typing, and at the end of that time would come the test of her ability to fill a position as stenographer. She dared not risk the humiliation of failure; her pride,--the strongest element in her make-up,--would not permit it. She must work, work, work; she must utilize every hour, every minute of these precious weeks of instruction!
The girl knew in her heart that she had many of the qualifications of a good secretary. She was pretty, she was well-mannered, intelligent, and could speak and write good English. To find ample justification for this estimate, she had but to compare herself with other girls in the school. These for the most part were foreign-born. A large percentage were Jewesses, thick-lipped and large-nosed, with heavy black coils of hair worn over ill-disguised “rats.” Jeannette detected a finer type, but even to these exceptions she felt herself superior. They chewed gum a great deal, and shrieked over their confidences as they ate their lunches out of cardboard boxes at the noon hour. She could not bring herself to associate with such girls, and forestalled any approach to friendliness on their part by choosing a remote corner to devote the leisure minutes to study. In consequence she became the butt of much of their silly laughter, and though she winced at these whisperings and jibes, she never betrayed annoyance. There was a sprinkling of men and boys throughout the school, but the male element was made up of middle-aged dullards and pimply-necked raw youths, none of whom interested her.