“When does she go to bed?” he enquired. He thought the little face looked pale and tired. “Whenever I do,” Minnie answered, and then and there expressed her unalterable opposition to all these silly, high-flown ideas that women got out of books. (Mr. Petersen fancied he recognised this antagonism to book learning.) She brought up her Sandra according to her own common-sense and the dictates of a mother’s heart, and not according to doctors and _books_. In a _natural_ way. Mr. Petersen had nothing to say on that dangerous subject. He had come to ask Minnie if she would like to go to work in his office. “But I don’t know anything. I can’t do anything!” “You’ll learn easily.” “And what could I do with Sandra?” “I thought of that. My housekeeper’s a very fine woman; I spoke to her; she says she’d be glad to take care of the little girl all day.” Thus it was arranged. “I might as well stop here,” said Minnie, “until I’m more settled, anyway.” Mr. Petersen agreed, and as he didn’t think it proper that his visit should be a long one, rose to take leave. He clasped Minnie’s hand over the head of her child. “A brave, fine, sensible woman!” he thought. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN I As an office worker Minnie was not so successful as Mr. Petersen had anticipated. Not by any means. She tried; she was very earnest and, in a way, painstaking, but it was extremely difficult to teach her anything. Within a week Mr. Petersen was bitterly regretting Miss Layne, whom he had ruthlessly, although generously, discharged. He was obliged to admit that Minnie was not bright or quick, and neither was she accurate. She learned to typewrite, but how badly! At figures she was hopeless. She always made mistakes. “But I know you’ll go over them,” she would say, in regard to her crooked and erroneous columns. “You’re sure to find any mistakes there are.” He remembered Frances, her capability and intelligence. He asked after her. “She’s gone out to the Coast,” Minnie told him. “She’s settled out there. I never hear from her.” Evidently a serious breach. He regretted it; he thought what a help Frances might be to her poor sister. Somehow it distressed him to see the poor plump little soul working away, poring over his books. He got Miss Layne back again, and she did all the work that really mattered, and left the rest for her abhorred colleague. She detested and despised and feared Minnie. She had seen at once that the artful widow was sure to hoodwink Mr. Petersen. He saw strange things going on, which amused while they troubled him. He saw Minnie putting pencils and erasers and sheets and sheets of folded paper into her coat pocket. For her child, no doubt: but though he smiled at her maternal obsession, he was growing convinced that the womanly woman is out of place in a business office.... Her conduct toward Miss Layne he could not admire. She was so unnecessarily haughty, so frigid. And insisted so upon this being her first experience of “work.”