The Charm School
"Miss Benedotti was not quite ready, and so I brought the next name on the list. My dear Sally," she added, as Sally was suddenly shaken by a suspicious cough, "I hope you haven't taken cold."
No, Sally assured her that she hadn't, and took her place at the desk.
"Do you have any special difficulty with your accounts?" inquired the bookkeeper.
"Yes," said Sally, "the difficulty of keeping any money in the bank," and she giggled irrepressibly.
Miss Curtis reproved such levity with a kindly word, but the accountant, seizing a pencil, wrote down this less polite admonition: "Behave, you idiot."
"The general scheme of a monthly balance with the bank," he went on, "and of course you must balance monthly—is this—" And again having recourse to his pencil he wrote: "Get this old girl out of the room while Elise is here."
"I can't do it," said Sally, aloud.
"Oh yes, you can, if you try," answered the accountant, and Miss Curtis thought he gave the dear girl an unnecessarily severe look.
Exactly at the end of ten minutes Sally was dismissed and Elise entered. She did
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