Grossman's reputation was different, but except for a smirk or two he
had never bothered her. Nor did anybody else connected with the firm.
They all were too much afraid of Wahlbaum.
So, except for the petty, contemptible annoyances to which all young
girls are more or less subjected in any cosmopolitan metropolis,
Athalie had found business agreeable enough except for the
confinement.
That was hard on a country-bred girl; and she could scarcely endure
the imprisonment when the warm sun of April looked in through the
windows of Mr. Wahlbaum's private office, and when soft breezes
stirred the curtains and fluttered the papers on her desk.
Always in the spring the voice of brook and surf, of woodland and
meadow called to her. In her ears was ever the happy tumult of the
barn-yard, the lowing of cattle at the bars, the bleat of sheep. And
her heart beat passionate response.
Athalie was never ill. The nearest she came to it was a dull feeling
of languor in early spring. But it did not even verge on either
resentment or despondency.
In winter it was better. She had learned to accept with philosophy the
noises of the noisiest of cities. Even, perhaps, she rather liked
them, or at least, on her two weeks' vacation in the country, she
found, to her surprise, that she missed the accustomed and incessant
noises of New York.
Her real hardships were two; poverty and loneliness.
The combined earnings of herself and her sisters did not allow them a
better ventilated, or more comfortable apartment than the grimy one
they lived in. Nor did their earnings permit them more or better
clothing and food.
As for loneliness, she had, of course, her sisters. But healthy,
imaginative, ardent youth requires more than sisters,--more even than
feminine friends, of which Athalie had a few. What she needed, as all
girls need, were acquaintances and friends among men of her own age.
And she had none--that is, no friends. Which is the usual fate of any
business girl who keeps up such education and cultivation as she
possesses, and attempts to add to it and to improve her quality.
Because the men of her social and business level are vastly inferior
to the women,--inferior in manners, cultivation, intelligence,
quality--which seems almost to make their usually excellent morals
peculiarly offensive.
That was why Athalie knew loneliness. Doris, recently, had met a few
idle men of cultivated and fashionable antecedents. Catharine, that
very evening, was evidently going to meet a man of that sort for the
first time in her career.
As for Athalie, she had had no opportunity to meet any man she cared
to cultivate since she had last talked with C. Bailey, Jr., on the
platform of the Sixth Avenue Elevated;--and that was now nearly four
years ago.