"Good afternoon, Miss Marion," he said beaming pleasantly upon her. He prided himself that he knew the entire Sunday School by name, and never made a mistake, although there were some fifteen hundred on the roll. "I am glad to see you, although I have but a few minutes to spare before a most important meeting. Is there anything that I can do for you? Your father was a man whom I greatly honored, and whose friendship I prized beyond most. He was a man of God if there ever was one."
Marion looked up with a sudden light in her eyes and forgot her fright.
"And he had a great admiration for you, Mr. Radnor," she said shyly. "He once said he would rather ask a favor of you than of any man he knew, because he said you treated a poor man as if he was a prince."
"Well, he was a prince if there ever was one," said the bank president heartily, "and I feel honored that he so honored me. Now, if there is any service I can render his daughter I shall be doubly pleased."
"Well," said Marion, with a sudden return of her embarrassment, "I want to get a position as a saleswoman in a department store. Could you give me a letter of introduction somewhere to someone you know? I think I could be a salesgirl. It seems to me the work would be easy to learn, and I would try with all my ability to do credit to whatever recommendation you feel you can give me."
"Why, surely," beamed Mr. Radnor heartily.
He delighted to do favors to members of his Sunday School, and it happened that this request was one that he was peculiarly able to grant just at that time. One of the chiefs in a great department store was under heavy obligation to him. He felt reasonably sure that anything he asked of the man at that time would be readily granted. Moreover, he was one who delighted to please others, especially when it cost him little trouble. He turned to bis telephone and called up his man.
Marion's cheeks glowed with pleasure as she listened to the one-sided conversation and heard the glowing praise of her father's sterling character and the kindly words about herself. In wonder she listened, and knew the gate of her desire had swung wide at the magic touch of this great man's word.
It was just one minute of three when the bank president hung up the receiver and turned to Marion graciously smiling.
"It is all right, Miss Marion," he said in the same tone he used to announce the annual Sunday School picnic, "you can have a position as soon as you are ready to take it, I think. You'll need to answer a few questions, of course, but they are mere formalities. Mr. Chapman has promised to give you something worth while. You had better go right over and make out the application blanks while it ie fresh in his mind. He said he could see you in half an hour. You are to come to the second-floor office and inquire for Mr. Chapman. Here, I'll give you my card"; and he hastily wrote across the top of his card, "Introducing Miss Marion Warren," and handed it to her.
"Don't think of thanking me. No trouble whatever. I'm only too glad that it was possible for me to do it. It is fortunate that you caught me just at this time as I am usually out of the office before this hour. Now I must go to my appointment. Sorry I can't visit with you a few minutes. I hope you'll have no trouble in securing just what you want at a good salary. He promised me he would do his best for you financially for a start and give you opportunity to rise. Come back if you have any trouble but I don't think you will. Good-afternoon. So glad you came."
It was over, the dreaded interview. Marion stood on the steps of the great building and looked back at it with awe as an employee lazily closed and fastened the great gate of shining steel bars. The massive stone building seemed to tower kindly above her as if it had been a kind of church in which some holy ordinance had been observed, so truly she felt that God had been kind to her and helped her in her need.
CHAPTER IV
She hurried to the department store, full of tremors. As in a dream, she passed through the ordeal there. She came out a half hour later dazed with the rapidity of the machinery through which she had passed. She went to the waiting-room, and sat down for a minute or two to think it over and steady herself. She dared not go home to her sister-in-law with the strangeness of it all upon her. It seemed queer to her that people passing back and forth in the store did not look at her and see from her eyes that something unusual had happened to her. She was engaged, regularly engaged, as a saleswoman, although it had been strongly impressed upon her that the size of the salary she was receiving was entirely due to the influence of the bank president and that, in the words of the brusque Mr. Chapman, it was "up to her" to get more pay as rapidly as she chose. It was at the ribbon-counter that she was to begin, but perhaps some day she might attain to the book department. Mr. Chapman had intimated that there might be a vacancy there soon, and he would see. Her eyes shone in anticipation. To handle books! To know them as if they were people, acquaintances!
To be among them all day long! What joy that would be!
She sat quietly thinking it over for at least ten minutes, looking around on the great store with its rising galleries and vaulted arches; listening to the heavenly music that came from the organ up in the heights somewhere among those tiers of white and gold pillars. It was her store. She was part of it. In a little while she was to be one of the wheels in the great mechanism that made this institution possible. She would be where she could watch the multitude of passing faces, hear the grand music, and now and then catch passing bits of uplifting conversation. It was wonderful, wonderful! How glad her father would have been! Of course he would have been sorry, grieved, that it must be just as a salesgirl she was to start out in life, and not as a teacher; but that could not be, and she knew he would have been glad of this opportunity for her.
Then, with a little quaking in her heart at the thought of Tom and Jennie and what they would say, she rose hurriedly and wended her way through the store; a little frail figure of a girl, with shining eyes and a flower face, her plain, neat, street suit and black felt hat attracting little attention beside the gaudy spring attire that flaunted itself on every hand.
She had to stand in the trolley car nearly all the way home; far it was after five o'clock, and cross, tired shoppers filled up every seat before the shy girl could reach them. The red had faded from her cheeks by the time she reached home, and Jennie noticed that she looked worn and tired, albeit the glow in the girl's eyes puzzled her.
"Where on earth have you been?" she questioned sharply. "I should think with all there is to do you might have hurried home."
"I have been to see someone," said Marion as she had planned to say. "I came home as soon as I could."
"H'm!" said her sister-in-law significantly. "Well, I've taken down all the curtains and washed them this afternoon, and I'm tired; so you can get supper. You better hurry, for Tom has to go out this evening early."
Without answering, Marion laid aside her hat and coat, and obediently went into the kitchen, tying on her apron as she went. In spite of her she could not get rid of a felling of guilt in the presence of her sister-in-law, but out in the kitchen by herself she felt like singing at thought of the prospect before her. She would not have to take orders from Jennie any more, nor bear her frowns and sharp words. She would be her own mistress. There might be orders in the store, of course there would, but she would have her hours, and her times when she might do as she pleased. Her whole life would not be under unsympathetic surveillance.
But Jennie was not nearly as unconcerned as she tried to appear. She was genuinely worried. Had Marion somehow found that will? Did she suspect that it had been hidden? She longed to go to the old desk and see whether it was still where she had hidden it, but she did not dare lest Marion should see her and suspect something.
"Do you suppose she's been to see a lawyer about whether she's got to sign away her part of the house?" questioned Jennie in a whisper when Tom came home.
"Nonsense! Jennie," exclaimed her husband, "what's got into you? Marion won't make a fuss. She never