She said composedly, "Unless we get there first. Unless we form an
organization immediately--on a regional basis--to hammer home our side.
_Skilled_ labor that's been through the birth-pangs of organizational
strikes. They're the roughest kind, and they still lie ahead for the
South. Access to the markets. A good life for the management and
supervisory workers. Bracing climate. Sound Republican territory."
She had him. She could feel it, and she was never wrong. Let him nibble
at the bait a while; let him taste it and want it, and bite down into
it all by himself--bite down on that buried "we" that would hook him,
deep and clean and gasping.
It had looked like a mighty dull autumn, but things were looking
better, thought Sharon Froman contentedly. True, if she was going to
help this interesting Mr. Chesbro with the curious wife it would mean
deferring work on her novel again. Too bad. But she didn't mind the
sacrifice. She had made it often enough before.
* * * * *
Regional organization. Hammer hard. Grants from the government? Sure.
Tax breaks from the northern states, panicky attempts to match whatever
the South might offer? Sure, thought Artie Chesbro; he could arrange
that easily. And then?
No more waiting for the legislature to approve or for the assayers to
report or for any of the other soul-killing delays that had been the
sum of his life; he would be in, he would be at the top of something
big. Where he had always wanted to be. Where he deserved to be.
He looked across to where his wife had gone. And her, he thought,
satisfied, she would learn at last! Everything he had had to put up
with from her, over. Just because her father had a little money she'd
thought she owned him--him! Artie Chesbro!
He cleared his throat. "We'd better get some sleep, Miss Froman," he
told the girl. "We've got to talk about this in the morning. I think
there's a good deal in it--for both of us."
Mrs. Goudeket almost pounded the floor with her fists. Again on her
feet! Always this Miss Froman would land on her feet! Without hard
work, without virtue, always by black magic being in the right place,
always by the smiling face and the straightforward look fooling the one
person she had to fool. And this time it wasn't one man, it was two. So
let Mickey Groff slip through one snare, she had Artie Chesbro caught
in another. God, you call this fair? she demanded.
Better she should have left her at Goudeket's Green Acres. What could
she have caught there? That star of stage and screen and _brissim_,
Dave Wax? The horse-wire expert, Mr. Semmel? But no! She had to throw
the girl out--into this!
Mrs. Goudeket moaned and put her fingers in her ears to shut out the
maddening words.