ute had her share of humor. Smiling back at her
interlocutor she proceeded to give Hertha's question the thought it
deserved.

"Where do you feel that your talent falls short?" she demanded.

"Oh, everywhere," Hertha answered vaguely, and then added, "it's all so
confusing, especially when you have to hurry."

"You haven't been at work long enough to be speeded," her adviser
answered. "Perhaps they aren't teaching you well."

"The others get ahead." In the answer lurked a hint of tears.

"I don't believe, then," Miss Wood said, weighing her words carefully,
"that you will want to be a stenographer; that is, a stenographer whose
whole time is taken up with typewriting and dictation. But you can be a
secretary with only moderate skill at stenography if you have other
qualifications."

"Probably I haven't got them," Hertha murmured.

"I know you have some of them." Miss Wood became emphatic now, she felt
on safe ground. "You have an attractive personality. Why, I should try
you in my office, if I had one of my own, the first minute I saw you!
You would be courteous to all who came in, and discreet; you wouldn't
talk about your employer's business when you went home; and," looking
about her, "you are orderly. Oh, you have many qualifications." The last
words were vague but Miss Wood left her listener cheered and with
returned self-respect. Especially was Hertha pleased that a woman, not a
smirking man, expressed a desire to employ her if given the opportunity.

Unfortunately, the next day, in her tussle with a business order, she
made such a hodge-podge of words that her teacher laughed. That evening
she knocked at Mrs. Pickens' door.

She was welcomed cordially to a comfortable seat while her landlady
hastily gathered together the bunch of newspapers that she had been
looking over and threw them into a corner.

"What have you been reading about to-night?" Hertha questioned. "A young
woman who doesn't know her own mind?"

"I reckon there're plenty of that sort," was the answer, "or if they do
know what they want they'll never get it. I just read a modest
advertisement in which a refined young woman, graduating from a school
of stenography, says she wants a position with an agreeable gentleman.
Hours short. How would you like that now?"

"I might like it, but I reckon after he tried me with one of his letters
he wouldn't like me."

"Nonsense, then he wouldn't be agreeable."

Hertha was silent, and Mrs. Picke