you're head of a women's real-estate
firm, after you women get the vote, and rusty, old-fashioned people like
me are out of the way, perhaps you can do that sort of thing." And he
smiled encouragingly.

"Rot," said Chas., and amiably chucked her under the chin.

CHAPTER XX

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 J