TRUAX & FEIN was the first firm toward which Una was able to feel such loyalty as is supposed to distinguish all young aspirants—loyalty which is so well spoken of by bosses, and which is so generally lacking among the bossed. Partly, this was her virtue, partly it was the firm’s, and partly it was merely the accident of her settling down.
She watched the biological growth of Truax & Fein with fascination; was excited when they opened a new subdivision, and proudly read the half-page advertisements thereof in the Sunday newspapers.
That loyalty made her study real estate, not merely stenography; for to most stenographers their work is the same whether they take dictation regarding real estate, or book-publishing, or felt slippers, or the removal of taconite. They understand transcription, but not what they transcribe. She read magazines—System, Printer’s Ink, Real Estate Record (solemnly studying “Recorded Conveyances,” and “Plans Filed for New Construction Work,” and “Mechanics’ Liens”). She got ideas for houses from architectural magazines, garden magazines, women’s magazines. But what most indicated that she was a real devotee was the fact that, after glancing at the front-page headlines, the society news, and the joke column in her morning paper, she would resolutely turn to “The Real Estate Field.”
On Sundays she often led Mr. Schwirtz for a walk among the new suburban developments.... For always, no matter what she did at the office, no matter how much Mr. Truax depended on her or Mr. Fein praised her, she went home to the same cabbage-rose-carpeted housekeeping-room, and to a Mr. Schwirtz who had seemingly not stirred an inch since she had left him in the morning.... Mr. Schwirtz was of a harem type, and not much adapted to rustic jaunting, but he obediently followed his master and tried to tell stories of the days when he had known all about real estate, while she studied model houses, the lay of the land, the lines of sewers and walks.
That was loyalty to Truax & Fein as much as desire for advancement.
And that same loyalty made her accept as fellow-workers even the noisiest of the salesmen—and even Beatrice Joline.
Though Mr. Truax didn’t “believe in” women salesmen, one woman briskly overrode his beliefs: Miss Beatrice Joline, of the Gramercy Park Jolines, who cheerfully called herself “one of the nouveau pauvre,” and condescended to mere Upper West Side millionaires, and had to earn her frocks and tea money. She earned them, too; but she declined to be interested in office regulations or office hours. She sold suburban homes as a free lance, and only to the very best people. She darted into the office now and then, slender, tall, shoulder-swinging, an exclamation-point of a girl, in a smart, check suit and a Bendel hat. She ignored Una with a coolness which reduced her to the status of a new stenographer. All the office watched Miss Joline with hypnotized envy. Always in offices those who have social position outside are observed with secret awe by those who have not.
Once, when Mr. Truax was in the act of persuading an unfortunate property-owner to part with a Long Island estate for approximately enough to buy one lot after the estate should be subdivided into six hundred lots, Miss Joline had to wait. She perched on Una’s desk, outside Mr. Truax’s door, swung her heels, inspected the finger-ends of her chamois gloves, and issued a command to Una to perform conversationally.
Una was thinking, “I’d like to spank you—and then I’d adore you. You’re what story-writers call a thoroughbred.”
While unconscious that a secretary in a tabby-gray dress and gold eye-glasses was venturing to appraise her, Miss Joline remarked, in a high, clear voice: “Beastly bore to have to wait, isn’t it! I suppose you can rush right in to see Mr. Truax any time you want to, Mrs. Ummmmm.”
“Schwirtz. Rotten name, isn’t it?” Una smiled up condescendingly.
Miss Joline stopped kicking her heels and stared at Una as though she might prove to be human, after all.
“Oh no, it’s a very nice name,” she said. “Fancy being called Joline. Now Schwirtz sounds rather like Schenck, and that’s one of the smartest of the old names.... Uh, would it be too much trouble to see if Mr. Truax is still engaged?”
“He is.... Miss Joline, I feel like doing something I’ve wanted to do for some time. Of course we both know you think of me as ‘that poor little dub, Mrs. What’s-her-name, D. T.’s secretary—’”
“Why, really—”