Mary, she was one of those young
persons who holds a position merely as a means to an end--the sort who
dresses to impress everyone, from the president of the concern if he
is in the matrimonial or romantic market to the elevator boy if said
elevator boy happens to have a bank account capable of taking one to
all the musical shows and to supper afterward. Having been by turns a
milliner's apprentice, assistant in a beauty parlour, and cashier in a
business men's restaurant, Truletta Burrows had acquired a certain
chicness enabling her to twist a remnant of chiffon or straw into a
creation and wear it in impressive contrast with her baby-blue eyes
and Titian-red hair. In the majority of cases where a girl has
neither family nor finances she must seek a business situation in
order to win a husband. Trudy went after her game in no hesitating
manner.

She had no intention of becoming one of the multitude of commercial
nuns who inhabit the United States of America this day--quiet women
with quick eyes, a trifle cold or pensive if analyzed, severely combed
hair, trim tailor suits and mannish blouses with dazzling neckties as
their bit of vanity--the type that often shoulders half the
responsibility of the firm. Whether achieving a private office and a
nervous stenographer who is disappointed at having a lady boss is to
be preferred to a house-and-garden career is, like all vital issues, a
question for debate.

Neither did Trudy propose to shrivel into a timid, slave-like type of
person kept on the pay roll from pity or by reason of the fact that
initiating a novice would be troublesome. Such a one was Miss Nellie
Lunk, who sat in a corner of the hall making out requisition slips and
taking care of unwelcome visitors--a pathetic figure with faded eyes
and scraggly hair, always keeping a posy on her old-style desk and
crocheting whenever there was a lull in work. Thirty years in business
was Miss Lunk's record, twenty-five in Mark Constantine's office and
five in the employ of Mr. O'Valley, that lovable, piratical Irishman
who achieved his success by being a brilliant opportunist and who, it
would seem, ran a shoestring into a fortune by a wink of his blue
eyes.

Trudy knew that Miss Lunk lived alone--the third story back, where she
cooked most of her meals, while a forlorn canary cheeped a welcome.
She possessed a little talking machine with sentimental records, and
on Sundays she went to a cafeteria for a good, hearty mea