She Bore Me Company

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 20, 1910

She Bore Me Company

I was the shabbiest girl at the office. It was no one's fault and no one's shame that we were poor—I had intelligence enough to know that. I knew, too, what a sacrifice my mother had made to pay for my tuition at business school. Still the knowledge of my shabby clothes forced itself upon me, particularly my old black skirt.

O, if you knew how I disliked that skirt! Mother had cleaned it and pressed it and cleaned it, but it seemed “bent” with age, and all the office girls looked so fresh and pretty in their trim business suits.

I imagined all the first morning that they were pitying me and felt them looking at my shabbiness, and during noon hour I was so miserable. But when I went back the next morning I noticed that one of the girls had on nearly as old clothes as I did, and she was so nice to me, I fancied she was glad I had come because of our mutual poverty. Not until after I earned enough money to buy some suitable clothes did I realize that the “poor girl,” as I thought her, had drifted back into the prettiest, most tasteful clothes worn by any of the girls. She had only borne me company at a most trying time, and she knew, because her fellow workers all admired her, that the little object-lesson would keep them from hurting my feelings.

The day has come now when new clothes are usual. But in my office when a girl comes in shabby, painfully sensitive, as I was, I “bear her company” until better times shall come.—The Delineator.