Part 38 (1/2)
”This way!”
”I'm ready to take that job you was tellin' me about till--”
”In here, sister, where we can talk business alone.”
She followed him back through the glazed door, through an outer office arranged like a school-room with aisle-forming desks, and white-s.h.i.+rt-waisted girls and men clerks with green eye-shades bent double over typewriters and books as big as the marble tablets on which are writ the debit and credit of all men for all time.
Boys scurried and darted; telephone bells jangled; and finally the quiet of an inner office, shut off from the noises like a padded cell, almost entirely carpeted in a leopard's skin and hung with colored lithographs of many season's comedy queens, whose dynasties were sprung from caprice and whose papier-mache thrones had long since slumped to pulp.
”Now sit here, sister--here in this chair next to my desk, where I can look at you. Gad, ain't you grown to be a big girl, though!”
”I'm ready for that job now, Mr.--Mr. Myers.”
”Well--well--well!”
Mr. Myers swung on his swivel-chair, squinted his eyes further back into his head, and nodded further appraisal and approval.
”Big little girl--can I call you that, Queenie? How have you been?”
”I've had a hard time of it, Mr.--”
”Hold out your hand and lemme tell your fortune, sister.”
”Quit!”
”Dear child--you mustn't act like that--here--hold out your--”
”Quit!”
”Come now--”
”We want jobs, me and my little sister--when she gets here. I told you about her, you remember. I--I've had experience on Western--”
”Naughty--naughty eyes--devilish eyes! Don't you look at me like that--don't! You big little devil, you!”
”What is it, sir?”
”Good! Sit there with the sun on you--you've got hair like--”
”I've had experience with first-row--”
”Gad!” He swerved suddenly forward in his chair so that his small feet touched the floor. ”Gad, stand up there--stand over there in that suns.h.i.+ne by the window!”
”What--”
”Stand up--there, agin that screen there--”
Dark as a nun in her wimple, but golden as a sun-flower, she rose as Trilby rose to the eye of Svengali--
”Gad!” he repeated, bringing his small tight fist down on a littered ash-tray, ”by Gad!”