said Mr. Fein to her, “we’ll do that sort of thing, just as the Sage Foundation is doing it at Forest Hills.” And he smiled encouragingly.

“Some day,” said Mr. Truax, “when you’re head of a women’s real-estate firm, after you women get the vote, and rusty, old-fashioned people like me are out of the way, perhaps you can do that sort of thing.” And he smiled encouragingly.

“Rot,” said Chas., and amiably chucked her under the chin.

[289] CHAPTER XX

TRUAX & FEIN was the first firm toward which Una was able to feel such loyalty as is supposed to distinguish all young aspirants—loyalty which is so well spoken of by bosses, and which is so generally lacking among the bossed. Partly, this was her virtue, partly it was the firm’s, and partly it was merely the accident of her settling down.

She watched the biological growth of Truax & Fein with fascination; was excited when they opened a new subdivision, and proudly read the half-page advertisements thereof in the Sunday newspapers.

That loyalty made her study real estate, not merely stenography; for to most stenographers their work is the same whether they take dictation regarding real estate, or book-publishing, or felt slippers, or the removal of taconite. They understand transcription, but not what they transcribe. She read magazines—System, Printer’s Ink, Real Estate Record (solemnly studying “Recorded Conveyances,” and “Plans Filed for New Construction Work,” and “Mechanics’ Liens”). She got ideas for houses from architectural magazines, garden magazines, women’s magazines. But what most indicated that she was a real devotee was the fact that, after glancing at the front-page headlines, the society news, and the joke column in her morning paper, she would resolutely turn to “The Real Estate Field.[290]”

On Sundays she often led Mr. Schwirtz for a walk among the new suburban developments.... For always, no matter what she did at the office, no matter how much Mr. Truax depended on her or Mr. Fein praised her, she went home to the same cabbage-rose-carpeted housekeeping-room, and to a Mr. Schwirtz who had seemingly not stirred an inch since she had left him in the morning.... Mr. Schwirtz was of a harem type, and not much adapted to rustic jaunting, but he obediently followed his master and tried to tell stories of the days when he had known all about real estate, while she studied model houses, the lay of the land, the