Part 42 (1/2)
”Do you think,” Hertha asked, sitting on the little straight white chair opposite Miss Wood, ”do you think that it needs any special talent to be a stenographer?”
She put her question hesitatingly, playing the while with her hands, a habit that had lately come to her with the city's insistent hurry and nervous demand for quick thought. Her day at school had been a hard one and only a walk with Bob had brought back courage to face life.
”I certainly think,” Miss Wood answered, ”that there are plenty of stenographers in New York to-day without talent. I've had some of them work for me.”
”Yes,” said Hertha with a little smile, ”but you wouldn't want me to be that sort!”
The a.s.sistant secretary of the a.s.sociation for Improving the Condition of the Dest.i.tute had her share of humor. Smiling back at her interlocutor she proceeded to give Hertha's question the thought it deserved.
”Where do you feel that your talent falls short?” she demanded.
”Oh, everywhere,” Hertha answered vaguely, and then added, ”it's all so confusing, especially when you have to hurry.”
”You haven't been at work long enough to be speeded,” her adviser answered. ”Perhaps they aren't teaching you well.”
”The others get ahead.” In the answer lurked a hint of tears.
”I don't believe, then,” Miss Wood said, weighing her words carefully, ”that you will want to be a stenographer; that is, a stenographer whose whole time is taken up with typewriting and dictation. But you can be a secretary with only moderate skill at stenography if you have other qualifications.”
”Probably I haven't got them,” Hertha murmured.
”I know you have some of them.” Miss Wood became emphatic now, she felt on safe ground. ”You have an attractive personality. Why, I should try you in my office, if I had one of my own, the first minute I saw you!
You would be courteous to all who came in, and discreet; you wouldn't talk about your employer's business when you went home; and,” looking about her, ”you are orderly. Oh, you have many qualifications.” The last words were vague but Miss Wood left her listener cheered and with returned self-respect. Especially was Hertha pleased that a woman, not a smirking man, expressed a desire to employ her if given the opportunity.
Unfortunately, the next day, in her tussle with a business order, she made such a hodge-podge of words that her teacher laughed. That evening she knocked at Mrs. Pickens' door.
She was welcomed cordially to a comfortable seat while her landlady hastily gathered together the bunch of newspapers that she had been looking over and threw them into a corner.
”What have you been reading about to-night?” Hertha questioned. ”A young woman who doesn't know her own mind?”
”I reckon there're plenty of that sort,” was the answer, ”or if they do know what they want they'll never get it. I just read a modest advertis.e.m.e.nt in which a refined young woman, graduating from a school of stenography, says she wants a position with an agreeable gentleman.
Hours short. How would you like that now?”
”I might like it, but I reckon after he tried me with one of his letters he wouldn't like me.”
”Nonsense, then he wouldn't be agreeable.”
Hertha was silent, and Mrs. Pickens, seeing that she was in no mood for banter, asked sympathetically, ”You're mighty tired, honey?”
Her voice with its southern drawl reminded Hertha poignantly of her mammy. She longed childishly to put her head on the older woman's shoulder as she would have put it on her colored mother's, and be comforted. But she remained in her seat and answered with the single word, ”Discouraged.”
”It's too hot to work,” Mrs. Pickens said soothingly. ”I've managed myself to-day to spoil ten pounds of perfectly good fruit.”
”What a shame!” Hertha was alert at the disaster. ”Why wasn't I here to help you! I know how to cook.”
”You're a clever girl. You know the things you ought to know which is a lot more than I do, having been spoilt in my youth. And the things you don't know aren't worth worrying over.”
”I don't seem to know how to earn my own living.”