North of Fifty-Three

Dressed in a plain white shirt waist and an equally plain black cloth skirt, Miss Hazel Weir, on week days, was merely a unit in the office force of Harrington & Bush, implement manufacturers. Neither in personality nor in garb would a casual glance have differentiated her from the other female units, occupied at various desks. A close observer might have noticed that she was a bit younger than the others, possessed of a clear skin and large eyes that seemed to hold all the shades between purple and gray—eyes, moreover, that had not yet begun to weaken from long application to clerical work. A business office is no place for a woman to parade her personal charms. The measure of her worth there is simply the measure of her efficiency at her machine or ledgers. So that if any member of the firm had been asked what sort of a girl Miss Hazel Weir might be, he would probably have replied—and with utmost truth—that Miss Weir was a capable stenographer.