Part 5 (2/2)
The two departed, although it was quite evident that the merchant was not entirely pleased with the arrangement.
”Mr. Queerwitz! What a name!” Bobs was soliloquizing as she sat on the back seat of the big, comfortable limousine, and now and then glanced at her preoccupied companion. He was very rich, she decided, but not refined, and yet how strange that a man with unrefined tastes should wish to sell rarely beautiful things and antiques. Mr. Queerwitz was not communicative. In fact, he had tried to protest at the suddenly made arrangement and had declared to Mr. Jewett, in a brief moment when they were alone, that he shouldn't pay a cent of salary to that ”upstart of a girl” unless she did something to really earn it. Mr. Jewett had agreed, saying that he would a.s.sume the responsibility; but of this Roberta knew nothing.
They were soon riding down Fifth Avenue in the throng of fine equipages with which she was most familiar, as often the handsome Vandergrift car had been one of the procession.
Bobs felt that she would have to pinch herself as she followed her portly employer into an exclusive art shop to be sure that she was that same Roberta Vandergrift. Then she reminded herself that she must entirely forget her own name if she were to be consistently Dora Dolittle.
How Bobs hoped that she would be successful on this, her first case, that she might be permanently engaged by that interesting looking young man who called himself James Jewett.
CHAPTER VIII.
A NEW FRIEND
At that early hour there were no customers in the shop, but Roberta saw three young women of widely varying ages who were dusting and putting things in order for the business of the day. Mr. Queerwitz went at once to a tall, spare woman of about fifty whose light, reddish hair suggested that the color had been applied from without.
”Miss Peerwinkle,” he said rather abruptly, ”here's the new clerk I was telling you about. You'd better show her the lay of things before it gets busy.”
Miss Peerwinkle turned, and her washed-out blue eyes seemed to look down at Roberta from the great height where, at least, she believed that her position as head saleslady at the Queerwitz antique shop had placed her.
”Your name, Miss?” she inquired when the proprietor had departed toward a rear door labeled ”No admittance.”
Bobs had been so amused by all that she had seen that she hardly heard the inquiry, and when at last she did become conscious of it, for one wild moment she couldn't recall her new name, and so she actually hesitated. Luckily just then one of the girls called to Miss Peerwinkle to ask her about a tag, and in that brief moment Bobs remembered.
When the haughty ”head lady” turned her coldly inquiring eyes again toward the new clerk, Roberta was able to calmly reply, ”Dora Dolittle.”
Miss Peerwinkle sniffed. Perhaps she was thinking it a poor name for an efficient clerk to possess. Bobs' sense of humor almost made her exclaim: ”I ought to have chosen Dora Domuch.” Then she laughingly a.s.sured herself that _that_ wouldn't have done at all, as she did not believe that there _was_ such a name and surely she _had_ heard of Dolittle.
Bobs' soliloquy was broken in upon by a strident voice calling: ”Miss Dolittle, you're not paying any attention to what I am saying. Right here and now, let me tell you day-dreaming isn't permitted in this shop. I was telling you to go with Nell Wiggin to the cloakroom, and don't be gone more'n five minutes. Mr. Queerwitz don't pay salaries for prinking.”
Bobs was desperately afraid that she wouldn't be able to get through the morning without laughing, and yet there was something tragic about the haughtiness of this poor Miss Peerwinkle.
Meekly she followed a thin, pale girl of perhaps twenty-three. The two who were left in the shop at once began to express their indignation because a new clerk had been brought in for them to train.
”If ever anybody looked the greenhorn, it's her,” Miss Peerwinkle exclaimed disdainfully, and Miss Harriet Dingley agreed.
They said no more, for the new clerk, returning, said, ”What am I to do first?” Unfortunately Roberta asked this of the one nearest, who happened to be Miss Harriet Dingley. That woman actually looked frightened as she said, nodding toward her companion, ”Don't ask me. I'm not head lady. She is.”
Again Bobs found it hard not to laugh, for Miss Peerwinkle perceptibly stiffened and her manner seemed to say, ”You evidently aren't used to cla.s.s if you can't tell which folks are head and which aren't.” But what she really said was: ”Nell Wiggin will show you around, and do be careful you don't knock anything over. If you do, your salary's docked.”
”I'll be very careful, Miss Peerwinkle,” the new clerk said, but she was thinking, ”Docked! My salary docked. I know what it is to dock a coal barge, for I have one in front of my home, but----”
”Oh, Miss Dolittle, please do watch where you go. You almost ran into that Venetian vase.” There was real kindness and concern in the voice of the pale, very weary-looking young girl at her side, and in that moment Bobs knew that she was going to like her. ”Poor little thing,” Bobs thought. ”She looks as though some unkind Fate had put out the light that ought to be s.h.i.+ning in her heart. I wish that I might find a way to rekindle it.”
Very patiently Miss Nell Wiggin explained the different departments in the antique shop. Suddenly she began to cough and sent a frightened glance toward the closed door that bore the sign ”No Admittance,” then stifled the sound in her handkerchief. Nothing was said, but Roberta understood.
The old furniture greatly interested Bobs. In her own home there were many beautiful antiques. Casually she inquired, ”How does Mr. Queerwitz manage to obtain so much rare old furniture?”
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