He was a lean young man, not very tall, but with rather the air of an ex-college athlete. She was a plump, short girl, somewhat square in build, but distinctly handsome, showing beautiful teeth in her cordial smile. If the smile had been less cordial Miss Child might have conceived the catty idea that the magnificent ruby-velvet hooded evening cloak had been put on to impress the humble new acquaintance. However, it would have been mean to suspect a sister of Mr. Balm of Gilead of such a snobbish trick. And there was the smile.
"Miss Child, I'm very pleased to meet you," said the handsome girl warmly, just as her brother had hopefully prophesied. "Peter's told me quite a lot about you. I think you're awfully brave."
"Perhaps one doesn't deserve much credit for courage in doing a thing one wants to do," answered Winifred, her slim, ringless hand responding to the kind pressure of the plump one wearing too many rings. (They were all rubies to-night. Miss Rolls had read about a wonderful Russian woman before whom men went down like ninepins and who always matched her dresses with her jewels.)
Yes, Ena thought, Peter was right; the creature was a lady. She had a soft, throaty voice, like a blackbird when it talks to itself, and oh, a creamy accent! Miss Rolls would have given anything to extract it, like pith, from the long white stem in which it seemed to live. She would have been willing to pay well for it, and for Miss Child's length of limb, so necessary to show off the latest fashions. She saw and appreciated the odd, golliwog charm of wide-apart eyes under high arch of brow. And the full, laughing mouth, with the short upper lip, was beautiful, like the mouths of marvellous girls on magazine covers. The creature looked brave and rather sweet, and Miss Rolls was quite sorry for her; but the thing had to be done.
"Petro, you go away and let us have a talk," said Petro's kind sister gayly. "Two is company; three's none."
And Petro went, thinking Ena the grandest sort of a pal. He had done his best for her already. Raygan and the two ladies had graciously agreed to stay for a fortnight at least in the country upon which Providence had thrust them. Peter had Marconied home, and home would certainly Marconi back an invitation to Sea Gull Manor. As he had said to Ena, he had pressed the button; she must do the rest. But he felt now as if he would enjoy doing a great deal more for her than he had yet done.
"And just what do you want to do in New York, Miss Child?" inquired Miss Rolls, as they began slowly to pace the otherwise deserted deck.
"I have wild hopes of getting newspaper work of some sort through one letter of introduction I have," answered Win, "or into a choir as contralto from the other. If not—oh, well, every one says America's the country for women."
"Yes, it is. We have splendid fun," Ena assured her. "The men are so kind to us."
"I think they must be," Win agreed. "Mr. Rolls has been very kind. Are all the rest like him?"
"I—suppose they have different ways of being kind—some of them. Some may be safer than others. I hardly know how to put it!"
"I think I understand."
"I—wonder if you do. Oh, Miss Child, I wish I dared speak to you frankly!"
When people begin thus there is invariably something disagreeable to follow; but Winifred Child braced herself and said calmly: "Please do."
"It's very difficult. I'm quite afraid of you."
"It's I who ought to be afraid of you."
"Don't be! I wish I could make you trust me. Can I?"
"Why not?"
"I'm throwing things at you so suddenly. But what else can I do? We haven't much time. My brother'll come back and join us. And—it's about him I want to speak. He's so—interested in you."
"That's very nice of him." Winifred's voice was as cold and bright as a very small icicle.
"It ought to be! But—well, he's a dear brother and a splendid fellow in many ways. I hate to say anything against him. Yet I'd hate still more to have you—disappointed. His one fault is—he's rather foolish about women, especially those not exactly in his own set. Do you see what I mean? It's so hard for me! He said to-day he was going to try to help you. That frightened me a little. I felt I must give you this tiny warning, for Peter has such a trustworthy air, hasn't he?"
"Yes, indeed he has," answered Win, loyal still to Mr. Balm of Gilead, alias Peter Pan. But the night had grown colder.
"I'm his sister. I can't help feeling responsible for him. And, in a way, I feel responsible for you, too, as it's through him I've met you—and you'll be a stranger in our country. That's why I shouldn't have dared let this chance pass without speaking. Yet I keep rambling on without the courage to say much."
"It isn't necessary to dot all the i's and cross the t's," returned Winifred, trying not to let her voice be sharp or her tone bitter, for she had to believe that this girl was sincere. A sister would not blacken the character of a brother for the mere pleasure of hearing herself talk!
"You do take this as I mean it, don't you?"
"I think so."
"Thank you so much. It's very sweet and generous of you not to be angry with me and think me a busybody meddling in other people's business. But it is my business to see that my brother doesn't hurt a girl who trusts him—a stranger in a strange land. All I want you to promise is that instead of letting him help you, when he offers to, as he's sure to do—if he hasn't already—you'll let me do it."
"I'm hoping not to need help, except from the friends of my friend who has given me introductions," Win justified her pride of womanhood.
"I don't suppose you will need anything else. You look as if you could get along anywhere. But if you do need a push, promise you won't accept favours from my brother, or let him come into your life at all. It's entirely for your own sake I ask."
"I understand that, Miss Rolls. What other reason could there be?"
"There couldn't be any other. Do promise. I'm so frightened for you."
"I shall certainly accept no help from Mr. Rolls."
"That's good! It relieves my mind. And swear you won't let him dream that I've said anything or interfered with his plans."
"His plans!"
"Well—when a man with Peter's one fault offers to help a girl get on in New York—Please don't be offended"
"I am not. Of course it goes without saying that I won't let him know I've had a warning from you."
"He'd never speak to me again if you even gave him a hint."
"Don't be afraid. I won't; not the faintest. Why, we're landing to-morrow morning early! There won't be a chance to say more than 'Good-bye.'"
"There's to-night, after I go in. He'll be back––"
"I'm going in, too. I shall go when you go."
"Perhaps it would be better. Oh, you don't know what a weight is off my mind!"
"I'm glad it is gone."
"And you'll write to me, won't you, and let me know how you get along? Write just what you need. I'll be delighted––"
"If I need anything—thank you."
"My address is Sea Gull Manor, Old Chesterton, Long Island. Shall I write it down?"
"No, please don't trouble. I can always remember addresses. You're really very good—to take an interest. And—and I know it must have been hard for you to—to feel you had to speak."
It was also hard, desperately hard, for Win to pay this tribute to Miss Rolls's unselfish interest in her moral welfare. She tried to be grateful, to feel that her late friend's sister had been brave and fine and unconventional thus to defend a strange girl against one so near. But despite reason's wise counsel, her heart was hot within her. She felt like a heathen assured by an earnest missionary that her god was a myth.
She disliked kind Miss Rolls intensely, and would have loved to let loose upon her somewhat obtuse head the sarcasm of which at that moment she felt herself a past mistress. She wanted to be rich and important and have Miss Rolls, poor and suppliant, at her mercy. Horrified, she saw by the searchlight of her own anger dark depths of cruelty and revenge in her own nature. She longed to rush to Peter and tell him everything, and believe in him again, for it was hard to lose a friend—an ideal ewe-lamb of a friend. She wished she might wake up in her overcrowded stateroom and find that this hateful conversation had been a dream.
But she could not do any of these brutal, silly, or impossible things. She was not dreaming. All was true. Miss Rolls had meant well, and Mr. Balm of Gilead did not exist. He was only Peter Rolls, a rich, selfish fellow who thought girls who had to work fair game. His sister must know his true inwardness. Probably she had learned through unpleasant hushed-up experiences, through seeing skeletons unfleshed by Peter stalk into the family cupboard.
"You ungrateful beast, behave yourself!" Miss Child boxed the ears of her sulky ego and shook it.
The throaty quiver in the blackbird voice of the dangerous golliwog went vibrating through Miss Rolls's conscience in a really painful way. She felt as if she had had a shock of electricity. But, thank goodness, the worst was over, and now that she had grasped safety (for instinct said that the girl would not betray), she could afford to be generous.
She reminded herself that she had acted entirely in self-defence, not through malice, and she had not told a single lie about Peter. She had but said—in words—that some men were safer than others, which every one knew to be true; that Peter was rather foolish about women (so he was—ridiculously soft, not modern in his ideas at all!), and that it would be better for the girl to accept help from her—Ena—than from a young man. It was very good advice, and nothing Peter ought to be angry about, even if he should ever hear—which, pray heaven, he might not! As Ena reminded herself how wise and tactful she had been, a faint glow stole into the chilly zone round her heart, just as you can heat a cold foot by concentrating yourself on telling it that it is warm.
"I want to be your friend," she went on sweetly. "Perhaps you aren't very rich? As girl to girl, let me offer you a little, little present—or a loan—a hundred dollars. I've got it with me—"
"Oh, thank you many times, but I couldn't possibly!" cried Win. "I don't need it. I have lots of money."
"I'm glad—though I should have liked the pleasure," said Ena. And she genuinely would, because the act of giving would have pumped warmth into the cold place without waiting for time to change the temperature.
"There's one thing you must let me do, anyhow," she persisted. "That dress—the 'Blue Moon,' isn't it?—that you tried on and my brother bought for me, I want you to accept it. Oh, don't say no! It's miles too long for me" (she couldn't have brought herself to confess that it was hopelessly small for waist and hips), "and I never enjoy altered dresses—the style's lost. So you'll not be robbing me. If you won't have it, I shall believe it's a sign that you're offended at my interference."
Winifred thought for an instant and drew a long breath. "Then I must take the dress," she said. "It's more than good of you, of course. I shan't be in the kind of world where I can wear it, but––"
"Keep it to remember this evening—I mean, to remember me," Miss Rolls hastily amended.
"I will," said Win simply. But there was no danger that she would ever forget Miss Rolls—or her kindness.
SCENES FOR A "MOVIE"
When Peter thought that he might decently return to B deck without breaking into charming womanly confidences, it was deserted. The moon was struggling out through black clouds and pouring silver into the sea's ink, but the girl in the moon was gone.
When he found Ena again—which was easy because of the ruby cloak—she was sitting between Raygan and Lady Eileen on the boat deck. He knew that she would be annoyed if he mentioned Miss Child in this distinguished company, and, in any case, he would not have cared to speak of the girl there.
Realizing that he had kept away too long and lost his chance of seeing Miss Child again that night, he consoled himself by knocking at Ena's door when she had evaded him and sought sanctuary in her cabin. She let him in at once, not because she wanted to do so, but because he would "turn suspicious" if she made an excuse to keep him out.
"Well?" said he. "What did you think of her?"
"Miss Child? She seems a very nice girl, and you're perfectly right—she is a lady. I don't know if she's quite as young as you think, and I don't call her pretty; but she is attractive in spite of being so awfully tall. We had a pleasant talk, and I offered to do anything I could. I gave her our address, and she is to write."
"Did you tell her you'd invite her down?" Peter put this question diffidently.
"I—intimated it. She was rather independent but very nice, and said she was grateful, especially after I insisted on giving her that 'Moon' dress, which now I've sent to her cabin. You know, she has friends in New York, and seems to know just what she wants to do, so I couldn't thrust myself upon her. But I think I did the right thing."
"I'm sure of that, you dear girl," said Peter.
And so was the dear girl herself.
Next morning the room of the mirrors was destitute of dryads. Its once crowded wardrobes were empty; the huge screen was folded and leaning against the wall. The dryad door stood open (as Peter Rolls observed when he "happened" to pass, about the time the Monarchic neared the Statue of Liberty) and nothing reminiscent remained save a haunting perfume of "Rose-Nadine" sachet powder, a specialty which might have been the lingering wraith of a dryad.
As the visions had vanished with all their belongings, Peter thought it probable they would be on some deck or other watching for the New York skyscrapers. And he was right concerning four of his model acquaintances. The fifth was not visible, and Miss Devereux explained her absence by saying that she was "lazy."
"She's on her own now, you know," she added, "and can sleep as late as she likes. But I wouldn't miss the first sight of New York for a pound! Some people have no romance in them."
Up till the last minute Peter had hopes of B deck; but they were blighted and disappointed, even depressed; he had to land with Ena and her friends without having seen Miss Child. Still, there was the pier, crowded with people who had come to wave welcome to the Monarchic. There appeared to be a fearful confusion, and this was Peter's first return from his first trip abroad; but he knew that the excited throng would soon be sorted out under letters of the alphabet.
Peter senior had come to meet his returning children and the distinguished guests Marconi had bestowed on him (a little, dry, thin man, who looked as though a lost resemblance to Peter might come out if he were freshened up by being soaked for a long time in warm water), and he had already secured a tame official to glance graciously into the luggage. After shaking heartily the small bag of bones that was his father's hand, and saying "Hello, Dad! How's yourself? How's mother? How's everything?" Peter was free for a few minutes to sprint from "B" to "C."
His spirit rose at the comparative dearth of "C's." Not more than a dozen of the crowded Monarchic's passengers were dancing with impatience beneath the third letter of the alphabet, and Mr. Rolls, Jr., walked straight up to tall Miss Child without being beaten back by a surf of "C's." To be sure, Miss Carroll was under the same letter, and observed the approach of Peter with interest, if not surprise; but she was seated on a trunk at some distance key in hand.
"Well, I'm mighty glad to find you!" exclaimed Peter cordially. "I began to think it must be a trick of dryads to wait themselves ashore without waiting for the clumsy old ship to dock."
"I was busy packing this morning," replied the alleged dryad, with a hard, undryadic expression on her "heart-shaped" face.
"You disappeared so early last night, I'd an idea you were doing your packing then so as to be up with the dawn and get a good look at the harbour."
"I could see a great deal from our porthole."
"I shouldn't have thought you were the kind of girl to be satisfied with portholes," said Peter, hoping to wake up one of her smiles. Her voice sounded rather tired.
"Beggars mustn't be choosers," was the dry reply.
"But dryads may be," he encouraged her.
"I've left my dryadhood hanging up behind the door." She spoke sharply, almost irritably, it seemed. "I shan't need it in New York."
"Oh, won't you? That's where you're mistaken! There'll be lots of times when you'd rather have it than the grandest opera cloak."
"I shan't need an opera cloak, either."
Peter was still smiling, though less confident of the old friendly understanding which had given them a language of their own with words which would have been nonsense for others.
"We'll see. Anyhow, I shall ask you to go to the very first worth-while opera that comes along. Consider it a formal invitation."
"Very well, I will, and answer it formally. 'Miss Child thanks Mr. Rolls for his kind invitation, and regrets that a previous engagement makes it impossible for her to accept.'"
"By Jove, that does sound formal enough! How do you know you'll have a previous engagement?"
"I'm perfectly certain I shall."
This was the real thing! There was no joke in the bottom of the medicine glass.
Peter's face grew red, like a scolded schoolboy's. Winifred (who was looking at Miss Carroll's trunk, but saw only Mr. Rolls) thought that he was going to speak out angrily, and perhaps give her a glimpse of his black heart. She hoped he would, for it would have been a relief; but he did not.
"Have I done anything to offend you?" he asked with a straight look; and though he spoke in a low tone, it was not a secret tone at all.
"No, certainly not," she answered, opening her eyes at him. "Why do you ask?"
"Because—you weren't like this on the ship."
"I've left my ship manners hanging up behind the door with my dryadhood. I shan't use them in New York, either!"
"Well—I'm sorry!"
"I don't know why you should be." If she had not stared hard at Miss Carroll's trunk, and tried anxiously to make out the name on a very small label, she would have done what she had boasted of never doing, whatever the world did to her: she would have cried. As it was, she wore the expression of a budding basilisk.
"Don't you know? Well, then, you didn't realize what it meant to me to have you for a friend."
"I really didn't think much about it, Mr. Rolls!"
"Evidently not. But I did. Look here, Miss Child. Did my sister put you against me—or our friendship—in any way?"
"What an extraordinary idea!" sneered Winifred. "She spoke very nicely of you, as far as I can remember, and said you were a dear brother."
"Then why are you so unkind to me now after being nice on the ship?"
"Oh, that! It was for a cinema, a motion picture. Didn't you understand?"
This slapped Peter in the face: that she should retort with flippant slang, when he was earnestly begging for an explanation. At last she had succeeded in freezing him.
"I'm afraid I didn't quite understand," he said in a new tone which she had not heard before. Mr. Balm of Gilead, alias Peter Pan, had suddenly grown up, and as Peter Rolls, Jr., was all politeness and conventionality.
"I do understand now, though. Well, Miss Child, I must—thank that 'cinema' for some very pleasant hours. Here comes a man to look at your baggage. Just remind him that you're a British subject, and he won't make you any trouble. Neither will I!" Peter's hat was off, but his smile could have been knocked off only with a hammer.
"Good-bye," replied Win hastily, frightened at her own appalling success as a basilisk. "And thank you—for your part of the cinema."
"I'm afraid I don't deserve any credit. Good-bye. And good luck."
He was gone—but no, not quite. Without turning round to look at her again, he was stopping to speak with the Irish-faced servant of the customs. The latter nodded and even touched his cap. Peter Rolls certainly had a way with him. But Win already knew this, to her sorrow. She was glad she had thought of that horrid speech about the cinema. The man deserved it.
"That's the last I shall see of him!" she said to herself almost viciously, as the Irish-American official spied upon her toque the wing of a fowl domesticated since the ark. Yet for the second time Peter came back, stiffly lifting his hat.
"I only wanted to say," he explained, "that, cinema or no cinema, I hope, if I can be of service now or later, you will allow me the privilege. My address––"
"I have your sister's, thank you," she cut his words short as with a pair of scissors. "That's the same thing, isn't it?"
"Yes," he answered heavily—perhaps guiltily. And this time he was gone for good.
"What a neat expression," thought Winifred. "Gone for good!"
It sounded like a long time.
THE HANDS WITH THE RINGS
Peter Rolls, Jr., unlike his father, had practically no talent for revenge. In common with every warm-blooded creature lower than the angels, he could be fiercely vindictive for a minute or two—long enough, when a small boy, to give a bloody nose and to get one; long enough, at all ages, to want to hit a man, thoroughly smash him, perhaps, or even to kick him into the middle of next week; long enough to feel that he would like to make a woman sorry that she had been rude.
But there was always a spiritual and mental reckoning of a painful description: a soul's housecleaning which turned him out of doors a miserable waif; and it invariably came too soon, before he had had time to gloat over the blood on another boy's nose, or a man's humiliation, or a woman's repentant blush. Instead of heartily disliking people for the spiteful things they sometimes did, he was apt to turn round and wonder if the fault had not been his; if he were not the abysmal beast.
He had not half repaid Winifred Child for her rudeness with his coldness, yet no sooner was he in the huge gray automobile—which could comfortably have seated eight instead of six—than he felt a pang of remorse, exactly like a gimlet twisting through his heart from top to bottom.
"I oughtn't to have left her like that!" he reproached himself. "I ought to have hung around and seen that everything went all right. She said she had the address of a good, cheap boarding-house. But it may have changed. Or it may be full. And, anyway, how will she get there? She ought to take a cab. But will she? And if she does, won't she fall dead at the price? I ought to have warned the poor child. There are shoals of tips I might have put her up to if I hadn't always been talking about myself. What if she was cross? There must have been a reason. I must have done something she didn't feel like pointing out when I asked. What I don't know about women would make three encyclopedias."
It was too late, however, to act upon second thoughts which might or might not be "best." Peter was in the automobile, and it had started. Even if he went back, it would doubtless be only to find Miss Child gone. He tried to console himself with the fact that Ena had been nice to the girl, and that Miss Child had said—or anyhow intimated—that she would write. If she didn't, he could, at worst, find out her whereabouts by going to Nadine. Superior as Miss Child was to the other dryads, she would surely keep up communication with them. Miss Devereux was the sort who might lunch with him on the strength of "old friendship." He would give her oysters and orchids, and find out how things were going with the girl who had left her dryadhood behind the cabin door.
He tried to console himself with these arguments, but the pleasure of homecoming was spoiled. Father did not show any very exuberant joy at seeing him again, and it was disappointing to a warm-hearted nature if people were not exuberant, even for a minute, when you had been away for months.
The automobile, with its gray-silk cushions, its immense plate-glass windows, its travelling boudoir of mirrors, gold scent bottles, and other idiocies, its bouncing bouquet of fresh violets, its electric fittings, its air pillow embroidered with silver monograms and crests, its brocade-lined chinchilla rugs, tricky little extra seats, and marvellous springs, struck Peter as disgustingly ostentatious.
He wondered what Raygan and his mother and sister would think of folks in a democratic country using chinchilla for automobile rugs; and he was sure they must be having interior hysterics over the Rolls coat of arms—a dragon holding up a spiky crown of some nondescript sort on a cushion. The dragon looked rather like a frog rampant, and the crowned cushion bore a singular resemblance to a mushroom with an angry ladybird on its apex. How this family insignia had been obtained Peter did not know. His ribald questions had been treated by his sister with silent scorn. He would not be surprised if Ena had designed the thing herself!
As the car smoothly bowled Peter out of Winifred Child's life, away toward the Long Island manor house and the welcome mother would give, the deposed dryad was having her first experience of New York.
She parted company on the pier with Nadine (in private life Lady Darling), Nadine's manageress, Miss Sorel, and the quartet of models. They had almost forgotten her before they had gone two blocks "uptown"; and she had no reason to remember any of them with affection, except, perhaps, Miss Sorel, a relative of her one-time dressmaker who had "got her the job."
Win had heard that the cost of cabs was "something awful" in America, but she said to herself: "Just this first time I must have one." A bad night and the scene with Peter had dimmed the flame of her courage, and she felt a sinking of the heart instead of a sense of adventure in the thought of taking a "trolley." She would be sure to lose herself in searching for the boarding-house.
Her luggage—checked and in the hypnotic power of a virile expressman—had already vanished. It would arrive at its destination ahead of her. Perhaps there was no room there. In that case it would be sent away. Dreadful picture! False economy not to take a cab! Win supposed that a taxi would be no dearer than the horse variety and one would sooner learn the secrets of the future.
One of these secrets began to hint at its own hideous nature with every convulsive tick of the metre. It hiccuped nickels, and as Win's terrified eyes, instead of taking in New York, watched the spendthrift contrivance yelping for her dollars, she remembered that she owned but two hundred. She had had to be "decent" about tips on board. But forty pounds—two hundred dollars—had looked magnificent in her hand bag that morning. Paper money spread itself in such a lordly manner and seemed able to buy so many separate things. But by the time the merciless taxi had bumped her through devious ways up to Fifty-Fourth Street, three of the beautiful green dollar bills were as good as gone.
She longed to pray "Oh, do stop taxying!" at the doorstep before she darted up to inquire whether Miss Hampshire still kept the boarding-house; and it was maddening to hear that "teuf, teuf" desperately going on, chewing its silver cud, in the long pause before an answer came to the bell.
A black woman who flung open the door was startling as a jack-in-the-box for the English girl. Win had thought of American negroes but vaguely, as a social problem in the newspapers or dear creatures in Thomas Nelson Page's books. What with the surprise and the nervous strain of the disappearing dollars, she asked no further questions after the welcome news that Miss Hampshire existed and had a "room to rent." Hastily she paid off the chauffeur, adding something for himself (it seemed like tipping the man at the guillotine) and breathed again only when her trunk and dressing-bag blocked the narrow hall.
"I'm sure I don't see whoever's goin' to tote them things up to the third story," sighed the female jack-in-the-box, who was, after all, more purple than black when you looked closely, an illusion produced by a dusting of pink powder over a dark surface. "And how do I know Miss Hampshire'll take you?"
"But you said there was a room." The freeborn independence of a whole nation, irrespective of colour, shocked the effete stranger's breath away. She gasped slightly.
"Yeh. But that ain't to say you can have it. Miss Hampshire's mighty pertickler about her woman boarders," explained the purple lady. "You catched me all of a heap or I wouldn't o' let that feller slam yer things into the house and git away. You'll have to wait till I call Miss Hampshire. She'll talk to you."
"Tell her I was recommended by Miss Ellis, from London who boarded here three years ago," Win desperately tossed after a disappearing figure.
It was a mortifying commentary upon her personal appearance not to be invited to wait in the drawing-room, and Miss Child wondered what foreign strangeness in hat, hair arrangement, or costume had excited suspicion. She did not know whether to be more angry or amused, but recalled her own motto, "Laugh at the world to keep it from laughing first."
Suddenly the episode became part of an adventure, a great and wildly funny adventure, of which she was dying to see the next part. How she would love to tell Mr. Balm of Gilead! How his eyes would twinkle! But—there was no Mr. Balm of Gilead in this or any world. It was a dreary hall she stood in, with varnished brown paper pretending to be oak panels, a long-armed hatrack that would have made an ideal scarecrow, and ghosts of past dinners floating up from below with gloomy warnings.
From the same region came Miss Hampshire, smelling slightly of Irish stew. She was pale with the pallor which means shut windows and furnace heat, a little sharp-nosed, neat-headed woman in brown, whose extraordinarily deep-set eyes were circled with black, like spectacle rims. She was graciously willing to accept a guest recommended by Miss Ellis, hinting that, as she was of British ancestry, the English for her came under the favoured nation clause.
"To you the room with board'll be ten dollars a week," she said with flattering emphasis. "A well-known poetess has just left it to be married. It's not large, but, being at the back of the house, it's nice and quiet."
When Win was shown the third-floor back hall bedroom she saw that even a poetess of passion might have snapped at her first proposal. As Miss Hampshire said, it was not large; but there was the advantage of being able to reach anything anywhere while sitting on the bed, and unless the people six feet distant in a back room of the opposite house snored at night it ought to be quiet.
Win christened her room the "frying pan," because to search for another boarding-house might be jumping into the fire. And luckily her trunk would just squeeze under the bed.
"I suppose it would be no use calling on a business man before three o'clock?" She applied to Miss Hampshire for advice when she had unpacked her toothbrush and a few small things for which she could find niche or wall space.
"Before three? And why not?" The pale lady opened her eyes in their dark caverns.
"Why, I only thought they wouldn't be back in their offices from luncheon," explained the English girl.
"When you know a little more about N'York," replied Miss Hampshire, whose manner was involuntarily less mellow when she had hooked a fish, "you'll see why it could never be run as it is along those lines. Many of our most prominent business men consider a piece of pie with a tumbler of milk a good and sufficient lunch, and it takes them five minutes to swallow it."
Primed with this information and intricate instructions concerning street cars (a child once burned dreads a taxi), Winifred started out soon after her own midday meal, eaten in a basement dining-room.
She went first to see the editor; for somehow newspaper reporting seemed more congenial to the vivid New York climate than singing in a church choir, and the hugeness of the To-day and To-morrow building turned her again into a worm. It did not so much scrape the sky as soar into it, and when she timidly murmured the words "editorial offices" she was shot up to the top in an elevator as in a perpendicularly directed catapult.
When the fearsome thing stopped she had the sensation that her head alone had arrived, the rest had been shed on the way, but in a large open space furnished with roll-top desks and typewriters and men and girls she was looked at as though nothing unusual had happened.
"A letter of introduction for Mr. Burritt?" repeated a young man with a whimsical expression. "I'm afraid you'll have to go higher up to deliver it."
"I thought I'd got to the top," said Win. "Or"—and she tried to catch the office note of sprightliness—"does he inhabit a roof garden?"
The young man smiled. "He used to be fond of them after office hours. But not being a spiritualist, I haven't heard from him concerning his present habits."
"He is—dead?"
"That's about it," said the young man. "A year ago. But he was only our city editor, so maybe he didn't get a black border in your English papers."
Miss Child did not ask how one knew that she was English. She recovered herself, thought of taking leave, and then decided not to be precipitate. Instead, she inquired if she could see any other editor.
"Which other have you got a letter to?" the young man temporized.
"None. But––"
"Then I'm afraid it's no use without an appointment. Anyhow, this isn't the right hour to snapshot editors of daily papers. They're night-blooming flowers. Would you like to try for an appointment with Mr. Shaw, Burritt's successor?"
Win thanked him, but thought it would be no use. She would have liked to walk down, only there seemed to be no stairs. A merry youth who ran the nearest elevator asked if she would care to use the fire-escape.
The address of Mr. Noble, the organist, was that of a private house. It was a far cry from To-day and To-morrow, up in the hundreds, and Miss Hampshire had told Miss Child to take the elevated. Easier said than done. You could go up the steps and reach a platform on top of the improved Roman viaduct, but there were so many other people intent on squeezing through the iron gate and onto the uptown train—people far more indomitable than yourself—that nothing happened except the slam, slam of that gate in your face.
At last, however, Miss Child was borne along with a rush from behind and found herself swinging back and forth like a pendulum on a strap which she clutched wildly. Men in America were supposed to jump up and give women their seats, but there were no men in this train. It was peopled with women who had been shopping, and who carried bundles. Many went on so far that Win began to believe they were taking a jaunt for fun, especially as they did not seem at all tired, but chewed something unremittingly with an air of calm delight. This was, perhaps, what Americans called a "joy ride!"
There seemed to be no end to New York, and vistas of cross streets looked so much alike that Win did not wonder they were named only with numbers. She wanted One Hundred and Thirty-Third Street, and Mr. Noble's house was a long way from the elevated station. When she found it at last it was only to learn that six months ago the organist had accepted a position in Chicago. And New York seemed twice as big, twice as absent-minded, when both letters of introduction had failed.
Win had often tried to check her tendency to over-optimism by telling herself that neither Mr. Burritt nor Mr. Noble might have work to give. But Miss Ellis (now comfortably married in London) had said they were kind men. If they had nothing to offer, they would certainly introduce Miss Child to some one who had. It had never occurred to her that they might thoughtlessly have died or gone elsewhere. Editors and organists seemed so importantly permanent to the lay mind.
This was indeed being alone in New York! And at the very thought—now she could guess what it might be like—her one hundred and ninety-six dollars and twenty-eight cents seemed to be shrinking in the wash.
"Nonsense!" said she, on the elevated again, tearing downtown. "Don't be a silly. Any one would think you were the leading lady in a melodrama, turned out of the house without your hat, in a snowstorm that followed you round the stage like a wasp! You'll be all right. Miss Ellis told you they loved English girls in New York. Just you wait till to-morrow, my dear!"
The rest of the day she spent in the frying pan, "pulling herself together," and "seeing where she stood," a process consisting mostly of counting her greenbacks and comparing them with their equivalent in English money. After all, there was not too much time for this mental adjustment of things, because, being late in October, darkness fell early, and Miss Hampshire's boarders dined at six-thirty. Promptness was obligatory if you were a female. A little more latitude—a raising of the eyebrows instead of a frown—was granted if you were fortunate enough to be of the opposite sex. Miss Hampshire's sad smile seemed to concede that men had temptations.
There were bank clerks and schoolteachers and translators though no more poetesses; and everybody was kind to the new boarder, the Englishwoman, especially in telling her all about New York.
"What do you think of Broadway?" asked her neighbour a handsome young German Jew, who was more insistently American than any of those native born.
Win was shamefacedly not sure whether she had seen it.
"Not sure whether you have seen Broadway!" exclaimed Mr. Löwenfeld. "Wait till you've been on the Great White Way after dark. Then I guess you won't make any mistake."
"Is it so wonderful?" she asked.
"I should smile! There's nothing like it on earth. Would you like to walk out and see it to-night? Miss Secker and I'll take you, if you would, won't we, Miss Secker?"
"Only too pleased," rather shrilly replied a fair-haired girl on his other side—a pretty girl in eyeglasses who, Miss Hampshire had announced, was "translating secretary" for a firm of toy importers. Somehow the tone suggested to Win an incipient engagement of marriage and jealousy of new importations.
But Mr. Löwenfeld had spoken no more than the truth. Broadway at night, seen as a pedestrian at the side of Miss Secker, was astonishing, was marvellous, was unique. The whole sky was alight and pulsing with its magnificence. Twenty moons would not have been noticed. Everything that could happen was happening by electricity. It was Crystal Palace Fireworks, and the Lord Mayor's Show, and Coronation, and Mafeking, and naval manoeuvres with searchlights, all flashing and flaming, blazing and gyrating at the same time. Broadway gleamed white as the north pole, jewelled with rainbow colours, amazing rubies, emeralds, topazes, grouped in letters or forming pictures on invisible frames rising high above tall buildings or appearing on their façades.
Green sea waves billowed brightly, a giant cat winked golden eyes, two brilliant boxers fought an endless round, a dazzling girl put on and took off illuminated gloves; a darky's head, as big as a balloon, ate a special brand of pickled melon; a blue umbrella opened and shut; a great gilded basket dropped ruby roses (Buy them at Perrin Frères); a Japanese Geisha, twice life-size, told you where to get kimonos; a trout larger than a whale appeared and disappeared on a patent hook; and above all, brighter than all, rose against the paling sky from somewhere behind Broadway a pair of titanic hands.
These hands fascinated Win. They beckoned her gaze and held it. Slowly they came up and drew attention to themselves, silently filching it from Broadway's emblems of business success. The stranger in New York stopped involuntarily as if hypnotized, watching for the ten colossal outspread fingers to materialize on their unseen frames; to become hands, with wrists and upraised arms; and then to drop out of sight, like the last appeal for help of a drowning Atlas who had lost his grip on the globe.
Yet this immense, arresting gesture was never the last. Three seconds gone, then blazing back again, came fingers, hands, wrists, arms. And on every one of the ten fingers (including thumbs) flashed a huge ring, each different from the other in colour and design. Each ring was adorned with a jewelled letter, and as the hands reached toward the zenith the colour of the rings changed rapidly twice. It was impossible to remove the eyes from this sign until the gesture pageant had completed itself. To the lost dryad New York seemed dominated by Peter Rolls's Hands.
THE TWO PETERS
The hands of Peter Rolls!
They had Winifred Child's imagination in their grip. Sleeping and waking, she saw the glitter of their rings. For on her first night in New York Mr. Löwenfeld told her a story about the hands.
They were the hands of Peter senior. His commercial genius had spread them across the sky to beckon the public to his great new department store on Sixth Avenue. Just as at the beginning of the gesture you saw only the tips of the fingers, so Peter Rolls, Sr., had begun with a tiny flicker, the first groping of his inspiration feeling its way to success.
Everybody in the United States had heard of Peter Rolls, or it was not the fault of the magazines and Sunday papers. Peter Rolls had been for years one of the greatest advertisers in America. Mr. Winfield didn't see how, even on a remote little island like England, Miss Child could have escaped hearing about Peter Rolls's hands. This had now become the snappy way of saying that you intended to shop at Peter Rolls's store: "I'm going to the Hands." "I'll get that at the Hands." And Peter Rolls had emphasized the phrase on the public tongue by his method of advertising.
Each advertisement that appeared took the same form—a square space heavily outlined in black or colour, held up by a pair of ringed hands, facsimiles in miniature of his famous sky sign. And the several thousand salespeople in the huge store were slangily nicknamed "Peter Rolls's hands." But naturally these insignificant morsels of the great mosaic were not spelled with a capital H, unless, perhaps by themselves, and once when a vaudeville favourite sang a song, "I'm a Hand, I'm a Hand." It was a smart song, and made a hit; but Peter Rolls was said to have paid both the star and the management.
Apparently nothing concerning Peter Rolls, Sr., and his family was hidden from Mr. Löwenfeld and Miss Seeker, although they claimed no personal acquaintance with the great. Probably, if Win had asked, they could have told how many servants Mrs. Rolls kept and how many cases of champagne her husband ordered in a year. But questions were unnecessary. The subject of a self-made millionaire was a fascinating one to the lately naturalized German.
Peter Rolls, Sr., had emigrated from the north of Ireland as a young boy. He had contrived to buy a few cheap odds and ends likely to attract women buried in the country far from shops. He had somehow known exactly what odds and ends to select. That was genius; and he had coined money as a peddler. In his wandering life he made acquaintance with many tramps and saw how he might make even the lowest useful. After a few years he scraped up enough capital to start a small store in New York, far downtown, where rents were cheap.
Like his peddler's pack, the store was stocked with odds and ends. But again they were just the right odds and ends, the odds and ends that every one in that neighbourhood wanted and had never been able to obtain under one roof. No article cost less than five cents, none more than a dollar, and it was marvellous what Peter Rolls could afford to sell for a dollar.
"I Can Furnish Your Flat for Ten Dollars. Why? Because I Work with My Own Hands," was Peter Rolls's first advertisement. And the Hands had never lost their cunning since.
He could undersell any other shopkeeper in New York because he got his salesmen for next to nothing. They were a judicious selection from among his friends, the tramps. Any man who could recall enough of his schooling to do a little sum in addition was eligible. He was fed, clothed, tobaccoed, judiciously beered, watched all day while at work, and shut up at night in a fireproof, drink-proof cubicle. The plan proved a brilliant success. The little store downtown became a big one, and grew bigger and bigger, swallowing all the other stores in its block; and it was now ten years since the great Sixth Avenue department store, which could call itself the largest in New York, was opened under the benediction of the Hands.
Winifred had fancied, because of the balm which was making a fortune, that Peter Rolls, Sr., was some sort of a glorified chemist. But Mr. Löwenfeld roared at this idea. The Balm of Gilead was only one of the lucky hits in the drug department, in itself as big as a good-sized provincial store. The Hands sold everything, and though the tramps were long ago dead or abolished, Peter Rolls still undersold every other store in New York. How did he do it? Well—there were ways. The hands without a capital H might tell, perhaps; but they did not talk much. Peter Rolls never had any difficulty in obtaining or keeping as many of them as he wanted, and could get double the number if he liked.
"Does he still 'work with his own hands?'" quoted Win at last, feeling half guilty, as if she ought not to ask questions about Peter's father behind Peter's back. But the affairs of the Rolls family seemed to be public property. Mr. Löwenfeld and Miss Seeker both laughed.
"I should love," said the latter, "to see Ena Rolls's face if her father did work! She spells their name with an 'e'—R-o-l-l-e-s—and hopes the smart set on Long Island, where their new palace is, won't realize they're the Hands. Isn't it ridiculous? Like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand. She runs her father and mother socially. I guess the old man hardly dares put his nose inside the store, except about once a year; and Ena and the old lady never buy a pin there. As for the young fellow, they say he doesn't bother: hates business and wants to be a philanthropist or something outlandish on his own. I should say to him, if he asked me: 'Charity begins at home.'"
Those last two sentences spoken by Miss Emma Seeker on Winifred Child's first night in New York had as direct an effect upon the girl's life as if the ringed hands had come down out of the sky and clutched her dress. She did not attach much importance to the words at the time, except to think it snobbish of Miss Rolls and weak of her mother never to show themselves under the roof where their fortune was being piled up. Also, she thought it disappointing of Peter junior not to "bother" about the business which had been his father's life work. But then Peter was altogether disappointing, as Miss Rolls (with an "e") had disinterestedly warned her.
It was not until Win had been in New York for a month that the influence of Miss Seeker's words made itself felt, and the Hands gave their twitch at the hem of her dress. They had been on her mind often enough during the four weeks—morning, noon, and night—but she had never known that she was physically within touching distance.
The "happy omen" of getting her passage to New York free had stopped working on the Monarchic. Since then bad luck had walked after her and jumped onto her lap and purred on her pillow, exactly like a cat that persistently clings to a person who dislikes it. All the positions which she was competent to fill were filled already. Only those she could not undertake seemed to be open. She tried to sing, she tried to teach, she tried to report news, she tried to be a publisher's reader, and to get work in a public library. She tried to make hats, she tried to act, but nobody wanted her to do any of these things, unless, perhaps, she went away and trained hard for a year. When matters began to look desperate, and not till then, she applied to Nadine.
But Lady Darling had gone back to England, and Miss Sorel, not having recovered her health after the great tossing at sea, had been replaced by a brand-new American manageress. No more models were wanted. There was nothing that Miss Child could do, and the only result of her visit was delight in the heart of Miss Devereux because "that queer Child girl was laughing on the wrong side of her mouth." The new manageress was so preoccupied in manner and so sure that Miss Child's services would not be needed that Win did not even leave her address. Besides, as it happened, she had given Miss Hampshire "notice," and had not yet found another boarding-house.
"I think I ought to try to get into a cheaper place," she explained. And that was a reason; but another, just as important, was pretty Miss Seeker's jealousy because Mr. Löwenfeld talked too much to the English girl at the table.
After all, the best that Win could accomplish after three days' dismal search was a saving of two dollars a week. For eight dollars she secured a fourth-story back hall bedroom half as big and half as clean as Miss Hampshire's, and she laughed aloud to find herself feeling desperately homesick for the "frying pan." For Win could still laugh.
It was counting her money, the day after a servant at the new boarding-house stole twenty dollars, that whisked Miss Child's skirt within reach of the Hands. Things could not go on like this. She must get something to do at once—no matter what. Another girl in that house bought newspapers for the sake of the employment notices. Winifred borrowed the papers and answered many of the most attractive offers in vain. Next she tried the less attractive ones. When they were used up—and she also—she came down to what she called bed rock.
In bed rock were advertisements of several large stores for extra help through the holiday season. Of these Peter Rolls's store was at the head. "The Hands want hands," was part of the appeal, and Win instantly turned to something else. It was not until she had applied for work at six other shops, and found herself too late at all, that it began to seem faintly possible for her to think of going to Peter Rolls's father's store.
When the idea did knock at the door of her mind hesitatingly as Peter junior used to knock at the dryad door, the Hands' advertisement for help was the last of its kind in the papers. The Hands needed more hands than any of the other stores.
When Win was just about to say to herself, "That's the one thing I couldn't do," she remembered Miss Seeker's words. Miss Rolls ruled her father and mother socially. Peter senior was allowed to show his nose in the place only about once a year. Mrs. and Miss Rolls never bought a pin there. Young Peter didn't bother, but wanted to be a philanthropist. In fact, you would, apparently, be far more likely to meet a member of the Rolls family in any other shop than their own.
Instead of saying that she could not, Win said: "Why shouldn't I?" She told herself that in a vast house of business which employed over two thousand salespeople she would be a needle in a haystack—a needle with a number, not a name. "I'll go and ask for a place," she answered her own question.
But almost she hoped that she would not succeed. If she tried, failure would not be her fault.
NO. 2884
Morning and girl were gray with cold as Win hovered before the vast expanse of plate glass which made of Peter Rolls's department store a crystal palace. Customers would not be admitted for an hour, yet the lovely wax ladies and the thrilling wax men in the window world wore the air of never having stopped doing their life work since they were appointed to it.
But then they had a life work of the most charming description. Winifred envied them. It was indeed their business to make all men, women, and children who passed envy them enough to stop, enter the store, and purchase things to make real life as much as possible like life in the window world.
All the nicest things which could be done in the strenuous outside world could in a serene and silent way be done in window world. And the lovely ladies and their thrilling men had not to hustle from one corner of the earth to another in order to find different amusements.
In one section of plate-glass existence beautiful girls were being dressed by their maids for a ball. Some were almost ready to start. Exquisite cloaks were being folded about their shoulders by fascinating French soubrettes with little lace caps like dabs of whipped cream. Other willowy creatures were lazy enough to be still in filmy "princess" petticoats and long, weblike, silk corsets ensheathing their figures nearly to their knees. A realistic dressing-table, a lace-canopied bed, and pale-blue curtains formed their background. Instead of having to rush half across New York to the dance, it was apparently taking place next door, with only a thin partition as a wall.
In a somewhat Louis Seize room several wondrous wax girls and the same number of young men, with extremely broad shoulders and slender hips, were dancing a decorous tango. But, if they tired of that, they had only to move on a section, to find a party of four young people playing tennis in appropriate costumes against a trellis of crimson ramblers. Strange to say, a mere wall divided this summer scene from sports in the high Alps. There was gorgeous fun going on in this portion of window world, where men and girls were skeeing, tobogganing, and snowballing each other in deep cotton snow. Next door they were skating on a surface so mirrorlike that, in fact, it was a mirror.
A little farther on a young wax mother of no more than eighteen was in a nursery, caressing an immense family of wax children of all ages, from babyhood up to twelve years. A grandmother was there, too, and a hospital nurse, and several playful dogs and cats. In another house they were having a Christmas tree, and Santa Claus had come in person to be master of ceremonies. How the children on the other side of a partition, engaged in learning lessons at school desks, must have envied those whose Christmas had prematurely come! But best of all was the automobile race; or, perhaps, the zoo of window world, where Teddy bears and Teddy monkeys and Teddy snakes and Teddy everythings disported themselves together among trees and flowers in Peter Rolls's conception of Eden.
Win had often glanced into these windows before, hurrying nervously past, but now she lingered, trying to fill her heart with the waxen peace of that luxurious land of leisure. She walked very slowly all around the great square, three sides of which were crystal, the fourth being given up to huge open doors, through which streamed men and parcels and hurled themselves into motor vans. The idea flashed into the girl's head that here was the cemetery of window land. In those big boxes and packages that men furiously yet indifferently carried out, were the dolls or animals that had smiled or romped behind the plate glass, or the dresses and hats, the tennis rackets and toboggans they had fondly thought their own.
This promenade of inspection and introspection put off the evil minute for a while; but the time came when Win must hook herself on to the tail of a procession constantly entering at an inconspicuous side door, or else go home with the project abandoned.
"Of course I shall never see Peter Rolls or his sister here," she told herself for the twentieth time, and passed through the door almost on the back of an enormous young man, while a girl closed in behind her with the intimacy of a sardine.
"Gee! Get on to the tall Effect in brown!" murmured a voice.
"Ain't she the baby doll?" another voice wanted to know.
Winifred heard, and realized that she was the Effect and baby doll in question. She flushed, and her ears tingled. She thought of the Arabian Nights tale, where the searcher after the Golden Water was pestered by voices of those who had been turned to black stones on the way.
When the cue of tightly packed men and women had advanced along a corridor on the other side of the doorway, it began mounting a fireproof staircase. Up and up it went, slowly, steadily rising from story to story, but it did not spread across the whole width of the wide, shallow steps. Other men and women, in single file and with no attention to order, pushed themselves down, the ascending gang flattening them against the varnished, green wall as they sneaked hastily past. No one spoke to Win or told her anything (though the big fellow in front threw her a jovial glance when she trod on his heel, and she herself ventured a look at the rear sardine), but she knew somehow that the irregular, descending procession was the defeated army in flight; those who "would not do." She wondered if she should be among them after a few hours of vain waiting and standing on her feet.
Seven flights of stairs she counted, and then she and those in front and behind debouched into a corridor much longer than that at the entrance on the ground floor.
"They might have shot us up in the customers' lifts!" snapped the sardine who had just detached herself from Winifred's spine. "'Twould have saved their time and our tempers."
"They don't spend money putting up fireproof staircases for nothing," mumbled a voice over the sardine's shoulder. "They want to give us a free exhibition of an emergency exit. But it'll be the only thing we ever will get free here."
"Except maybe the sack—or the bounce," tittered the sardine.
There was something likable about that sardine. Win felt drawn to her, which was fortunate in the circumstances.
Nearer and nearer they approached, with a kind of shuffle step, to an office whose whole front consisted of window. This window was raised, and electric light streaming out brightened that distant end of the otherwise economically lit corridor. The advance guard of would-be hands stepped one at a time in front of a counter which took the place of a window ledge. Now and then a girl or a man was kept for several moments talking to a person whom Win could not yet see; a kind of god in the machine. This halt delayed the procession and meant that a hand was being engaged; but oftener than not the pause was short, and the look on the late applicant's face as he or she turned to scurry back like a chased dog along the corridor told its own story.
Win read each human document, as a page opened and then shut forever under her eyes, with a sick, cold pang for the tragedy of the unwanted. She ceased to feel that she was alien to these young men and women, because they were American and she English. A curious impression thrilled through her that she and these others and all dwellers on earth were but so many beads threaded on the same glittering string, that string the essence of the Creator, uniting all if they but knew it.
The realization that hearts near hers were beating with hope or dread, or sinking with disappointment, was so keen that the heavy air of the place became charged for Win with the electricity of emotion. She felt what all felt in a strange confusion; and when a stricken face went by, it was she, Winifred Child, who was stricken. What happened to others suddenly mattered just as much and in exactly the same degree as what might happen to her. The weight of sadness and weariness pressed upon her. The smell of unaired clothes and stale, cheap perfumes made her head ache.
"Tired, girlie?" inquired the big young man on whose broad back Win had involuntarily reposed on the way upstairs She was startled at this manner of address, but the brotherly benevolence on the square face under a thick brushwood of blond hair reassured her. Evidently "girlie" was the right word in the right place.
"Not so very. Are you?" She felt that conversation would be a relief. It was intensely cold yet stuffy in the corridor, and time seemed endless.
"Me? Huh! Bet yer my place yer can't guess what my job was up to a month ago."
He turned a strongly cut profile far over his shoulder, his head pivoting on a great column of throat above a low, loose collar that had a celluloid gleam where the light touched it. Only one eye and the transparent gleam of another cornea were given to Winifred's view, but that one green-gray orb was as compelling as a dozen ordinary seeing apparatuses.
"If I guessed what's in my mind, I'm afraid it would be silly," said Win. "You look as if you might be a—a boxer—or––"
"Or what?"
"Or as if you could train things—animals, I mean––"
"Gee-whittaker! If she ain't hit it square in the jaw first round! Go up ahead, little girl. This is where I move down one."
The sardines were now so loose in their partially emptied box that they could wriggle and even change positions if they liked. The big young man wheeled, passed his arm round Winifred's waist as if for a waltz, half lifted her off her feet, and set her down where he had been.
"Good gracious!" she gasped.
"That's what you get for bein' a bright child," he explained "The place is yours. See? If Peter Rolls wants only one more hand when your turn comes, you're it, and I'm left. I was lion man in Jakes's and Boon's show, but my best lion died on me, and that kind o' got my goat. Guess my nerve went; and then brutes is as quick as fleas to jump if they feel you don't know where you are for once. That shop is shut for yours truly, so I'm doin' my darnedest to get another. If Peter Rolls can use me, he can have me dirt cheap. I want to feed my face again. It needs it!"
"You give Father one straight look between the eyes," suggested the sardine, now at his back, "sort of as if he was a lion, and I'd bet my bottom dollar, if I had one, he dasn't hand you the frosty mitt."
"Who's Father?" the lion tamer threw over his shoulder Win had longed to ask the same question, but had not liked to betray herself as an amateur.
"Oh, I forgot this was your first party! Wish 'twas mine. Father's what the supe—the superintendent, the gent in the window—gets himself called by us guyls."
"Wipe me off the map! I'm some Johnny to cost you all that breath. But gee! the thought of standin' up to him gets my goat worse 'n twice his weight in lions. I'm mighty glad this young lady's gotta go through with it in front of me. Say, maybe you'll push the right bell with him, too."
"I hope we both may," answered Win fervently. "It's more than kind of you to give me your place, but really I––"
"Ain't we the polite one?" remarked the lion tamer. "Say, girlie, you've made a hit with me. Where did you buy your swell accent?"
"Don't make fun of me, please, or I shall drop!" exclaimed Win with a laugh nipped in the bud, lest it should reach the august ear of Father.
This way of taking the joke appeased those within hearing, who had perhaps believed that the tall Effect in brown thought a lot of herself and was putting on airs. Her seeming to imply that she might be considered ridiculous inclined censors to leniency.
"Have a spruce cream?" asked a girl in front, screwing her head round to see what the Effect was like, and offering a small, flat object about an inch in width and two in length.
"Thank you very much," said Win.
Every one near tittered good-naturedly. Perhaps it was that accent again! Funny, thought Win. Her idea had been that Americans had an accent, because they didn't talk like English people who had invented the language. Americans appeared to think it was the other way round!
She put the flat thing into her mouth and began to chew it. At first it was very nice; sugary, with a fresh, woodsy flavour which was new to her. Presently, however, the sweetness and some of the taste melted away, and instead of dissolving, so that she could swallow it, the substance kept all its bulk and assumed a rubbery texture exactly like a doll's nose she had once bitten off and never forgotten. She coughed a little and did not quite know what to do.
"Good heavens', she's goin' to absorb it!" ejaculated the girl in front, still twisting to gaze at the tall Effect. "Didn't you never chew gum before?"
"Only millionaires can afford it in my country," said Win, recovering herself. The laugh was with her! But every sound made was piano. There was the feeling among the mice that this was the cat's house.
The girl in front who had offered the chewing gum was small and just missed being very pretty. She had curly hair of so light a red that it was silvery at the roots. Seeing her from behind, you hoped for a radiant beauty, but she had pale, prominent eyes and a hard mouth. Win imagined that the muscles in her cheeks were overdeveloped because of chewing too much gum.
At last the procession had moved on so far that this girl arrived at the lighted window. Win's heart, which had missed a beat in a sudden flurry of fear now and then, began to pound like a hammer.
For the first time she could see the god in the machine, the superintendent of Peter Rolls's vast store, a kind of prime minister with more power than the king. She had fancied that he would be old, a man of such importance in a great establishment, a person who had the nickname of Father. But her anxious gaze, as she carefully kept her distance, told that he was not even middle-aged. He was, it seemed, a curious mixture of cherub and Mephistopheles in type: round faced, blue eyed, with smooth cheeks that looked pink even in the cruel electric light. His hair and brushed-up eyebrows were thin and of a medium brown; but he had a sharply waxed moustache and a little pointed goatee or "imperial" so much darker in colour that they were conspicuous objects.
He was talking to the girl in a high-keyed yet somewhat blustering voice, asking questions which Win could not and did not try to hear. The answers were given purposely in a low tone, and the girl laid on the counter several papers from a little black bag at her waist. These the superintendent took up, unfolding them with plump, dimpled fingers, like those of a young woman.
With his bright, glancing blue eyes he skimmed the contents of each paper—probably references, thought Win—and then returned them to their owner.
"These are no good," he pronounced in a louder voice than before. "And you don't look strong enough for Christmas work––"
Suddenly the red-haired girl darted her head forward, like that of a pecking bird, hastily muttered a few words, and drew back, as if hoping that those not concerned might fail to notice the manoeuvre.
"Oh—er—that's different," said the superintendent in an odd, uncomfortable tone, with the hint of "bluster" still in it. Win fancied she heard him add: "What salary?" In any case, the girl mentioned the sum of eight dollars, and at the same time scribbled something on a printed paper form pushed over the counter.
"Bet that ain't your line, kid," there came a murmur round the corner of a velvet bow on Win's hat. So faint was the murmur that she might almost have dreamed it; but, if uttered, it must have dropped from heaven or the lion tamer's lips.
Win was burning with curiosity. What two or three talismanic words could the red-haired girl have whispered so quietly, so secretively, to change in a second the superintendent's decision? It was almost like freemasonry. You whispered to the hangman, and he, realizing that you were a member, took the noose off your neck!
Alas, if Father refused her services, as he almost surely would, she had no such magic charm to make him change his mind! There was certainly a mystery, a secret password that did the trick; but the lion tamer, though a newcomer in this business like herself, appeared to know or guess, and bet that it "wasn't in her line."
Too late to ask questions! Her time had come. The red-haired girl, looking prettier than before because of a bright flush on her sallow face, pranced away, head triumphantly up, and a key and a queer little book in her hand.
Before Win realized what was happening she stood before the big, lighted window, longing though not daring to rest her trembling elbows on the counter. The cherubic yet keen blue eyes were staring into hers with the oddest expression she had ever seen. If the man had not been an important official, far above her (he would have thought) in position, Win might have fancied that he was afraid of her, afraid of something which he half expected, half dreaded, wishing to avert it, yet likely to be mortified if it did not come.