Her new position went well for several months. The editor was, as represented, a man of ice; but, as Hamlet has observed, being as pure as snow and as chaste as ice does not protect against calumny, and the wife of the editor, entering the office one day to find her husband and his secretary bending over an illegible manuscript, refused to allow such dangerous beauty so near her husband, and Pearl lost her second job.
Her next place was with an ambitious young firm which was putting a new cleaning fluid on the market. At first, in a busy office, Pearl seemed to pass almost unnoticed. Then one day the two partners, young men both and heretofore like brothers, came to her together and asked her if she would do the firm a great favor--sit for her portrait to a well-known artist so that they might use her picture as a poster to advertise their product. Pearl consented--she thought it would be rather good fun.
The result was successful. Indeed, the only criticism of the picture--which represented Pearl in tawny yellow holding up a saffron-colored robe at which she smiled brilliantly, with beneath it the caption, Why Does She Smile? Because Her Old Dress is Made New by--was that it would have been better to get a real person to sit for the picture, as the public was tired of these idealized types of female beauty.
But the trouble started over who was to own the original pastel. It developed that each partner had started the idea from a hidden wish to own a portrait of Pearl. They quarreled bitterly. The very existence of the firm was threatened. An old