. In parties with old neighbors she found sweetness, and on a
motor-trip with Henry Carson and his fiancee, a young widow, she let the
fleeting sun-flecked land absorb her soul.

At the office Una was transferred to S. Herbert Ross's department, upon
Walter's leaving. She sometimes took S. Herbert's majestic, flowing
dictation. She tried not merely to obey his instructions, but also to
discover his unvoiced wishes. Her wage was raised from eight dollars a
week to ten. She again determined to be a real business woman. She read
a small manual on advertising.

But no one in the _Gazette_ office believed that a woman could bear
responsibilities, not even S. Herbert Ross, with his aphorisms for
stenographers, his prose poems about the ecstatic joy of running a
typewriter nine hours a day, which appeared in large, juicy-looking type
in business magazines.

She became bored, mechanical, somewhat hopeless. She planned to find a
better job and resign. In which frame of mind she was rather
contemptuous of the _Gazette_ office; and it was an unforgettable shock
suddenly to be discharged.

Ross called her in, on a winter afternoon, told her that he had orders
from the owner to "reduce the force," because of a "change of policy,"
and that, though he was sorry, he would have to "let her go because she
was one of the most recent additions." He assured her royally that he
had been pleased by her work; that he would be glad to give her "the
best kind of a recommend--and if the situation loosens up again, I'd be
tickled to death to have you drop in and see me. Just between us, I
think the owner will regret this tight-wad policy."

But Mr. S. Herbert Ross continued to go out to lunch with the owner, and
Una went through all the agony of not being wanted even in the prison
she hated. No matter what the reason, being discharged is the final
insult in an office, and it made her timid as she began wildly to seek a
new job.

CHAPTER VIII

In novels and plays architects usually are delicate young men who wear
silky Vandyke beards, play the piano, and do a good deal with pictures
and rugs. They leap with desire to erect charming cottages for the poor,
and to win prize contests for the Jackson County Courthouse. They always
have good taste; they are perfectly mad about simplicity and
gracefulness. But from the number of flat-faced houses and three-toned
wooden churches still being erected, it may be deduced that somewhere
there a