"Yes, sir, Saturday night."
He again bowed slightly to signify that it was understood and that
their talk was ended.
She took her lunch hour to write to Mason. She put many sheets in the
machine and crumpled them into the waste basket in accomplishing this:
_Dear Mason: I have just learned of your kindness to me at the
hospital. Thank you for the thought._
_I find that I owe you $269.60, which I will repay in installments. I
enclose $12 for first installment. I regret that I am unable to pay it
all at once. I am leaving the office. Please don't write._
_Congratulations on your success._
_Sincerely,
Georgia Connor._
She felt as she dropped the note in the mail chute that Mason was a man
to love. Imagine Jim doing her a great service and keeping it quiet.
Jim took his affections out in words and physical embrace. Jim--she
caught herself up suddenly. This wasn't being resigned, as she had
prayed God she might be.
She answered half a dozen want ads before she could get the upset price
she had determined on--eighteen dollars. She covenanted for this
finally with a frowsy looking, bald little lawyer, in an old-fashioned
five-story, pile-foundationed, gray stone building on Clark street, put
up soon after the fire. The windows were seldom washed and there were
two obsolete rope elevators.
The little lawyer, Mr. Matthews, had a large single room in which he
sublet desk-room to a pair of young real-estaters. Georgia didn't like
the looks of the place, but inasmuch as Mr. Matthews didn't haggle an
instant about her salary, she took it.
She had nothing important to do. Mr. Matthews' mind was fussy and
unsystematic. He had little business and set her to copying over his
briefs of bygone years. "Codifying," he called it; why she never knew.
She shrewdly suspected she was engaged rather as a "front" to impress
clients than to work at her trade.
Whenever a visitor, whether collector or suspender peddler, came to see
Mr. Matthews, that attorney bade him sit a few minutes while he
finished up a letter that had to catch the Twentieth Century or the
five thirty Pennsylvania Limited, as the case might be. Then he would
fake a letter and Georgia would help him at the end by inquiring,
"Special delivery, I suppose, sir?"
It answered her purpose for the time being, but she hadn't the vaguest
intention of staying. She saw there was no future.
Mr. Matthews each morning requested her to oblige the young
real-estaters by "helping them out" with their correspondence.
"Helping them out" meant doing it all. Mr. Matthews was brimming with
euphemisms. Likewise they, the real estaters, got to asking her to
"help out" their friends, which she good-naturedly did--in hours.
Saturday Mr. Matthews didn't turn up, nor yet Monday. Tuesday when
Georgia suggested her payment, he said he was expecting a check that
afternoon. Thursday, when she insisted on it, he told her to collect
half from the real-estaters, since she had been working for them as
much as for him.
She couldn't see it that way at all. He had engaged her.
He fell into legal phraseology. "Qui facit per alium," or something of
the sort; and she told him nettly she wasn't a fool and that if he
didn't pay her immediately she would attach his furniture.
He turned his pockets inside out, showing a ten-dollar bill and
eighty-five cents. She took the bill and walked out. But it wasn't
much of a triumph. Her wages during her employment by Mr. Matthews had
averaged six dollars a week.
She was therefore unable to send Mason another installment; and
couldn't help being relieved because, despite her injunction, he had
written her.
"_Dear Mrs. Connor: Please do not hurry at all in that matter. Indeed,
I would be pleased to consider it an investment bringing in 5%, or if
you prefer, 6% a year. If you pay me $16.18 annually (or $4.18 more
during the balance of the current year), that would be an advantageous
business arrangement for me. I hope you may see your way clear to
agreeing to this._
_"With kind regards,_
"_Very truly,
"Mason Stevens._"