Plain Jane and pretty Betty

That ’phone was a nightmare to Jane that first day. It seemed to ring incessantly—though of course it did not—and the girl’s fingers became tired holding the pencil.

Some of those disembodied voices over the wire were so soft that Jane could scarcely hear them, and she disliked to ask them to repeat too many times, for fear of appearing stupid.

She took the messages, and, what is even more remarkable, she took them correctly.

There were personal callers, too, of course, and these interested Jane.

She was shy and self-conscious at first, but soon lost this shyness and self-consciousness in the fascination of the work she was doing.

It was wonderful to feel herself part of the hum and swing of business. Seeing how much business Mr. Garwick handled, she soon began to take pride in her employer and in the fact that she was his representative.

People who entered the real estate office of John Garwick found a young woman plainly but neatly dressed who rose to greet them pleasantly and asked their business in a professional voice.

Those clients liked her and talked freely to her—more freely, perhaps, than they would have talked to John Garwick himself.

As for Jane, she took a personal interest in each one of them and listened to the recital of their individual problems with a flattering interest.

From fright at the responsibility that had been placed on her young shoulders, Jane came to delight in her new importance.

By the time Mr. Garwick returned from his round of rent collecting, Jane’s face was flushed, her over-neat hair rather tousled here and there. Altogether she looked like a different girl.

“Well, how did you get along?” asked her employer, with a smile. “Many people been here? How about ’phone messages?”

Jane showed him her neat memorandum list of telephone calls and the notes she had made of personal calls.

“Here they all are,” she said, and added anxiously: “I do hope they are all right!”

Contrary to Mr. Garwick’s expectations, founded on rather long experience of new clerks, they were.

He called up his various clients and verified Jane’s report on them. Then he smiled at her.

“I see we are going to get along, young lady,” he said. “You have done a good day’s work!”

Jane was happier than she had ever been in her life as she sat beside Billy that evening in the moving picture house and watched the impossibly handsome hero of the picture go through impossibly heroic “stunts” on the screen.

“I’m going to love the work, Billy,” she said, in response to the latter’s sympathetic questions. “Mr. Garwick said some mighty nice things to me to-day, and if I don’t make him like me and my work lots better in the next few weeks, it won’t be because I haven’t tried!”

Later she attempted to get Billy to talk about his inventions. But the youth was unexpectedly gruff and taciturn when the subject was broached and Jane soon dropped it.

“He’s discouraged—poor Billy!” she thought, and became even more set in her determination to help him if such a thing were possible.

So matters went on for about a week.

Jane became so different from the quiet mouse-like girl she had been that those who knew her best marveled.

She got up in the morning with a song on her lips. She fairly danced through her dressing, the tidying of her own room, and breakfast. She was all smiles and sunny good humor to Mr. and Mrs. Powell, insisted on helping the latter with the dishes before she ran off to work, prophesying the most optimistic things about Mr. Powell’s injured hands and the probability of his soon finding work again, and generally acting like a streak of sunshine in the house.

Also, responsibility was changing her quickly from the child she had always been, younger in seeming than her years, to a young woman.

“We thought we were doing Jane a kindness to take her in and give her a home when Sarah Cross died,” Mrs. Powell said to her husband one morning after Jane had run off, throwing a kiss to them as she turned the corner on her way to work. “If we did, we’ve surely been paid for it. What would we do now without that girl I’d like to know, since we’ve had such bad luck?”

“She’s one in a thousand,” Mr. Powell agreed. “And if we weather this hard period, it’ll be because of her.”

By this time Jane and Mr. Garwick were firm friends. The girl was so careful, so painstaking, so eager to learn, and, withal, so clever that the genial realtor began to feel that he had found a treasure. Her pay was raised to fifteen dollars a week.

For one so young, Jane picked up the rudiments of the business in a surprisingly short time, and she handled clients or prospective clients with a tact and ease that surprised her employer.

She was eager to learn details concerning the property handled by the Garwick Agency, and several times went out to inspect various tracts or blocks of buildings after working hours simply because she was interested in the business and wanted to find out all she could about it. First, second, and purchase mortgages became of fascinating interest to her, and she pored over papers and contracts until her employer laughingly declared she would ruin her eyes and would perhaps have to wear a pair of those great horn-rimmed spectacles that made a young person look like an owl.

Then one morning Mr. Garwick had news for her.

“We’ve got a new house to list,” he says, glancing at her oddly. “The kind of house this agency hasn’t handled for a long while.”

The very word “house” was enough to rouse Jane’s interest. She looked her question.

“It’s the very finest of all the places on Rose Hill,” said Mr. Garwick. “Clyde Browning’s house.”

“Oh!” The exclamation came from between Jane’s lips. “Then—oh, why does he wish to sell his house?”

“I guess it isn’t a case of wish,” said Mr. Garwick, and Jane could see that he was genuinely sorry. “It’s a case, I take it, of stark necessity. He has to sell.”

“Then it’s true,” Jane said slowly. “It’s true what I’ve heard people say—that Mr. Browning has lost all his money?”

“I don’t know much about all of it,” said Mr. Garwick, tapping thoughtfully with his pencil on the edge of his desk. “I imagine he must have some left. But not nearly enough to keep up that big house on the hill with its servants and motor cars. It will be quite a come down for Browning, and I’m sorry. He’s always been a good fellow and a mighty popular one in town. Every one likes him—and pities him.”

“Because he’s lost his money?” Jane asked.

“That, of course.” Mr. Garwick nodded, but his face darkened as he added: “What Browning is to be most pitied for are those two selfish extravagant women of his. They’ll do nothing to help him through this crisis, you can bank on that.”

Jane was silent for a moment. She was thinking of Betty Browning—of the pretty, petulant face, the disdainful, almost rude manner of the girl who had lived in the finest house on Rose Hill.

Jane had no reason to love Betty Browning. Yet, being Jane, she took no pleasure in the contemplation of the downfall of the pretty, spoiled girl. She felt only how hard it would be for a person like that to meet poverty and accustom herself to it.

She said something of this to Mr. Garwick, and he looked at her curiously.

“I wouldn’t waste any pity on conceited doll-faced Betty Browning,” he said, with a grimace of distaste. “From the airs that girl puts on, any one might think she owned Greenville. No, I’m not in the least sorry for her or for that extravagant selfish mother of hers. I’m thinking of Browning, and I tell you I wouldn’t be in that fellow’s shoes just now for a million dollars!”

Outside of business hours Jane thought of little else that day and for many days to follow.

The beautiful house on Rose Hill to be sold! Betty Browning no longer able to lord it over the small town like a royal princess! What would she do?

Meanwhile, that was the very thing that Betty Browning was wondering, pretty Betty in the big house on Rose Hill.

Since that nightmare night of the fire at Martin and Hull’s when her world had threatened to topple about her feet, Betty had lived in a daze of unreality.

At first she hoped that her father would tell her it had all been a big mistake—that his investments had turned out well in spite of his fears, and that the horror of financial ruin was farther off than it had ever been.

But this Mr. Browning failed to do. He kept silence, going about his business with a grim face and set lips that told nothing. Betty watched him covertly and wondered how her mother could be so blind to the tragedy in his every look and gesture.

Mrs. Browning conducted herself to all intents and purposes as though the revealing conversation of that awful night had not been. The only sacrifice she made was to relinquish thought of the black gown that had caught her fancy.

Then one day, the final blow fell.

A maid knocked on Betty’s door while the girl was dressing to go out to a tea at one of the neighboring houses on Rose Hill.

Betty looked very lovely in a dress the color of a summer sky.

She turned to the maid and said curtly:

“Well, Nanette?”

“Mr. Browning is in the library,” said Nanette, with a curious stare at her pretty mistress. “He says, will you please come down at once.”