MARGY LIKED HER job and was extremely conscientious about her work, especially the first few weeks. She read all the letters through from beginning to end. Miss Barnick explained that this wasn’t necessary; in most cases a letter could be classified by its opening sentence. Margy tried to do it that way but invariably became interested in the contents and read the letters through. Ruthie told her not to worry—that after she had read ten thousand or so she’d be tired of letters.
Margy waited eagerly for Threat! letters to turn up. These letters threatened lawsuits because the writer alleged the goods received were misrepresented in the catalogue, or that the price was more than quoted or that money had not been refunded for returned merchandise. Margy had been instructed to deliver such letters immediately to Mr. Prentiss after first pinning the classifying Threat! slip to them. Sometimes she delivered as many as four such letters to him a day. Sometimes days went by without a single Threat letter in her pile. Whenever she went into Mr. Prentiss’ office he gave no indication that he was aware of her presence. He never looked up or said thank you. He was quite the busy executive with no time for polite amenities. She began to think that she was mistaken in her first idea that Mr. Prentiss was a kind, friendly human being.
Then she got into trouble.
It grew out of her habit of reading all the letters through and getting too interested in the writers. She answered one of the letters! Many a time, a crank letter came in or a foolish letter and the girls showed these to each other just for a laugh. One such foolish letter came to Margy’s desk.
A farmer near Trenton, New Jersey, evidently believing that anything could be had by mail, wrote in asking Thomson-Jonson to get him a wife. His only specifications were that she be young and a hard worker. His wife had just died and he needed a woman to help handle the chores around the farm.
Margy answered his letter during a lunch hour. Romantically she advised him to wait until true love came his way; not to marry merely to get someone to work for him. Then she had filed the farmer’s letter in the “No Answer Required” basket and that was the end of the episode (or so she thought) except she’d have a feeling of half-shame from time to time when the idea occured to her that she had done a silly thing.
But the farmer wrote to Margy asking her to marry him! The letter, addressed to Miss Margy Shannon in care of Thomson-Jonson, went to the desk of a reader newer than Margy. The girl read it, studied it, classified it as Threat! and carried it in to Mr. Prentiss. He sent for Margy.
“Miss Shannon,” he said, “you understand that employees are not permitted to receive personal mail here.”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I know. I never let anyone write to me here.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nevertheless, you’ve received an extremely personal letter at this address.”
Margy became frightened. Who could have written to her? Was it someone to whom her family owed money and who meant to embarrass her so that the debt would be paid quickly? She recalled how once her father had bought a dime ticket for a church raffle from a man in the shop; how he had won a turkey and how they had delivered it to him at the shop; how the foreman had told him he’d be fired if he didn’t keep his personal life the hell away from his work.
I’m going to get fired, thought Margy, and they don’t give you references if you get fired. And how can I get another job without references? And I’m supposed to get a two-dollar raise at the end of the year.
“I don’t see how that could be, Mr. Prentiss,” she said fumblingly. “I don’t know anyone who would send me a letter—not even to my home.”
“I won’t make a mountain out of a molehill,” said Mr. Prentiss. “The letter happened to come to my department. I won’t report this to your supervisor. It might lead to your dismissal, you know.”
She mumbled, thank you, and waited. He said nothing more. She turned to go.
“Just a moment. You might want to read the letter,” he said. “Technically, it’s your mail.” He permitted himself to smile briefly.
She stood in front of his desk and read it. Her face got hot and red with embarrassment. He took off his glasses and watched her as she read. When she finished, she looked at him. She noticed how young—almost boyish—he looked without his glasses. She handed the letter back to him.
“Don’t you want to keep it?” he asked. “After all, a girl doesn’t get a marriage proposal every day.”
“No, sir, I don’t want to keep it.” Her eyes were hot with unshed, shamed tears.
He tore the letter in two and threw it into his wastebasket. “We’ll consider the incident closed,” he said. “But don’t let it happen again.”
“No, sir,” she promised.
She waited. He waited. She thought: There’re a lot of things I could talk to him about if we were in the same class. He thought: I’d like to find out all about her; where she lives, what kind of parents she has—her hopes for the future—what her thoughts are. It would be easy to fall in step with her some night when she’s leaving and just walk along with her and talk. But she’d misunderstand. There’d be talk. The bosses wouldn’t like it. Not good policy to mingle with the help, Mr. Thomson had advised him that time when it got around that he liked that red-headed Marie a little. And his mother! The thought of disloyalty to his mother (disloyalty according to his mother’s definition) made the whole small episode with Margy a little distasteful to him.
“That’s all,” he said curtly.
He watched her walk out of the office. It was quite a while before he put his glasses back on and started work on the accumulated Threat! letters on his desk.
Margy thought only of Mr. Prentiss the rest of the day. She became very sad thinking about him. The refrain of a poem she had been made to memorize in grade school came back to her.
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: It might have been.
Yes, it was all like Maud Muller on a summer’s day, the judge coming by while she raked the hay. Ships that pass in the night, thought Margy. That’s Mr. Prentiss and me. If only it had been that I went to college like he did—or that I was a supervisor here. Then maybe he’d give me a second thought. But in the first place, he’s too old. No, that doesn’t matter. It’s better that the husband be older than the wife.
She dreamed a while in the slow period of the afternoon. She ended up her dream by deciding that it couldn’t be. A girl marrying the boss was more romantic than practical. Of course, she had read a lot of stories about secretaries marrying their bosses. But it always turned out that the secretary was a society girl who was working under an assumed name in her father’s organization just to prove to her father that she could earn her own living without his help. And when the boss married that girl it was all right because the boss was a rising young executive and the old man had had his eye on him for some time. So he made him vice-president the day he married the daughter. Sometimes the stories had it that the boss’s son was working incognito in the firm and he fell in love with the secretary who had no idea at all about his real identity. In this case, the secretary was always breathtakingly beautiful with a bouncing pert personality.
With sighs of regret, Margy set aside the dream of marrying the boss. By closing time she had rationalized away her shame at receiving the letter and being called into Mr. Prentiss’ office about it.
“After all,” she explained to Reenie as they left the office together, “it’s not really my fault. I didn’t ask that farmer to write to me.”
“Look at it this way,” consoled Reenie. “Fifty years from now it will all be forgotten. If you do happen to remember it, you’ll brag to the other old ladies in the poor house how you had a chance to marry a guy once and you turned him down.”
“I really didn’t have a chance to . . .”
“A proposal’s a proposal,” said Reenie firmly, “no matter which way it’s dragged out of a man. And you’ve got refusal number one out of the way.”
“Do you think somebody will really propose to me someday?”
“Of course. And you mustn’t say yes right away. You must say no three times before you say yes.”
“Would you?” asked Margy.
“I always do,” said Reenie.
“What?” asked Margy, a little shocked as she got Reenie’s meaning. “You couldn’t have said yes, because you’re not married.”
“I wasn’t talking about marriage in my case. I was talking about holding out a little, you know, before you give in.”
“Oh, Reenie!”
Suddenly Reenie laughed and then said, “Shame on you for thinking bad thoughts about a friend.”
Margy was relieved. “You were only fooling, then.” She gave Reenie an affectionate shove. “Oh, you! Always full of jokes.”
“That’s me,” admitted Reenie. “The girl who’ll do anything for a laugh. And do I feel sorry for you!”
“Why?”
“Because next Saturday when you go to your confession you’ll have to tell the priest you thought evil thoughts of a friend.”
“I never did!”
“And you’ll have to tell him you lied to a friend.”
“When did I ever lie to you?” asked Margy.
“Just now when you said you never did.”
“Let’s talk about something different,” said Margy.
Reenie looked at her friend’s face and saw it was grave and downcast. She put an arm around her and hugged her close for a moment. “Oh, Margy,” she said, “don’t take things so serious. Learn to make and take a joke, ’cause if you don’t, it’s going to be an awful dreary life for you.”
A WEEK OR so later as Margy, Reenie and Ruthie were leaving the office, they saw a sprightly, coquettish, little old lady talking cutely to the private detective who stood in the doorway at closing time to watch that the girls didn’t carry merchandise out of the place. The lady was in gray: gray dress and toque with a bunch of artificial purple violets at the side; gray suede pumps and gloves and purse; sheer gray silk stockings. There was a sharp, spicy scent about her; carnation perfume.
“I’m waiting for my best beau,” she told the detective as the girls passed. “He always takes me to the theater and supper on my birthday.”
The three girls stared at her with frank curiosity and lingered near the doorway because they wanted to see the “best beau.” Each made a guess as to his identity. Margy decided he was Mr. Betz, the old but dapper accountant who wore a white carnation in his buttonhole each day and who wore fawn-colored spats when cool weather started up.
She was astonished when Mr. Prentiss stepped out of the elevator and the old lady claimed him by slipping her arm through his. Best beau, thought Margy, feeling something like distaste. Hm!
Mr. Prentiss tipped his hat to the girls as he and his mother were about to pass them. Mrs. Prentiss stayed her son by a slight pressure on his arm. She smiled at the three girls, each in turn, and looked straight and a little appealingly into each face as she did so, as if saying, Please, you who are so young and have so much before you, don’t take from me this son who is all I have.
She turned her head to smile at a fourth girl who stood with one elbow resting on a radiator, staring insolently at mother and son. When Mrs. Prentiss saw the girl’s red hair, she knew instantly that she was the Marie her son used to talk about so much. The little old lady’s sweet smile twisted into a sneer of hate. She pressed closer to her son’s side and drew him out of the building.
The three girls walked down the street a little behind the mother and son.
“The girl what marries him will be lucky,” said Ruthie. “He’s such a good son.”
“Who wants to marry a good son?” asked Reenie. “I’d rather marry a good man. Any day!”
“Well, I think it’s cute,” said Ruthie, “the way they’re more like sweethearts than mother and son.”
“And I think it stinks,” said Reenie.
“Reenie!” said both girls simultaneously and disapprovingly.
“Just for the sake of argument,” said Reenie, “Ruthie, would you marry a man like that—so hotsy-totsy with his mother?”
“Yes, I would!” said Ruthie courageously.
“Would you, Margy?” asked Reenie.
“I’ll let you know,” said Margy. “That is, if he ever happens to ask me.”