"Come in, then, Monday morning!" And the trust officer went homewards to
confide his perplexity to his wife as trust officers sometimes do. It
was a queer business, his. As trust officer he had once gone out to some
awful place in Dakota to take charge of the remains of a client who had
got himself shot in a brawl, and brought the body back and buried it
decently in a New England graveyard with his ancestors. He had advised
young widows how to conduct themselves so that they should not be
exposed to the wiles of rapacious men. Once even he had counseled
matrimony to a client who was difficult to control and had approved,
unofficially, of her selection of a mate. A good many of the social
burdens of humanity came upon his desk in the course of the day's
business, and he was no more inhuman than the next man. He was a father
of a respectable family in the neighboring suburb of Chester. His habit
was naturally to hunt for the proper formula for each situation as it
arose and to apply this formula conscientiously. According to Mr.
Gardiner, the duty of trust companies to society consisted in applying
suitable formulas to the human tangles submitted to them by their
clients. And in the present case Mrs. Gardiner suggested the necessary
formula.
"Why don't you send the girl to a good boarding-school? You say she's
fifteen and will have money."
"Yes,--some money, perhaps a good deal," her husband replied. Even in
the bosom of his family, the trust officer was guarded in statement.
"How much?" Mrs. Gardiner demanded.
"What difference does it make how much, so long as we can pay her school
bills?"
"It makes all the difference in the world!" the wife replied, with the
superior tone of wisdom. "It makes the difference whether you send her
to St. Catherine's or Herndon Hall."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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