“Where are the dancers?”
“They're all in the window.”
“But this in here is quite as big work, isn't it? Why isn't some of it
on display?”
“It's for outsiders. It isn't for my people.” She put a world of
protectiveness in the two final words.
“I can't see why not.”
“Because the people of Our Square don't need to be told of the tragedy
of life. Joy and play and laughter is what they need. So I give it to
them.”
A light came into his tired, old-young eyes. “Do you know, I begin to
think you're a very wonderful person.”
“Time to work again,” said she. Whereby, being an understanding young
man, he perceived that there would be no safe divergence from the strict
relations of employer and employed, for the present at least. Half a
dozen times he sat for her, sometimes collecting a dollar, sometimes
only fifty cents, the money being invariably handed over with a demure
and determined air of business procedure, and duly entered in a tiny
book, which was a never-failing source of suppressed amusement to him.
Then one day the basis abruptly changed, for a reason he did not learn
about until long after.
It had to do with a process which I must regretfully term eavesdropping,
on the part of the little sculptor. The subjects were two-on-a-bench,
in Our Square. One was Cyrus the Gaunt; the other an inconsiderable and
hopeless lounger, grim and wan.
Silver passed between them, and something else, less tangible, something
which lighted a sudden flame of hope in the hopeless face.
“A real job?” the lurking sculptor overheard him say, hoarsely.
Cyrus nodded. “Nine o'clock to-morrow morning, here,” said he.
Slipping quietly away, the girl almost ran into the grim and wan
lounger, no longer so grim and several degrees less wan, as he rounded
the opposite curve of the circle and passed out on the street in front
of her. The next instant Cyrus shot by her at a long-legged gallop and
caught the man by the shoulder.
“Here! Wait! Not nine o'clock,” he cried breathlessly. “I forgot. I've
got an engagement, a--very important business engagement.”
The other's jaw dropped. “What the--” he began, when there appeared
before them both a trim and twinkling vision of femininity.
“I'm glad I saw you,” said the vision to Cyrus, “because I shan't want
you until ten-thirty to-morrow.” Then she passed on, so deep in thought
that she hardly responded to the greetings which accosted her on all
sides. “I don't understand it at _all_” she murmured.
Promptly upon the morrow's hour Cyrus appeared at the studio, rumpled
and mussed as usual. “How do you do?” the artist greeted him. “Before
we go to work I want you to meet Fluff.”
Cyrus glanced at the kitten, who was chasing a phantom mouse up the
swaying curtain. “I already know Fluff,” said he.
“Oh, no, you don't,” she corrected gently. “That is, Fluff doesn't know
you. She doesn't know that you are alive. Fluff is a person of fine
distinctions. Come here, Mischief.” The kitten gave over the chase,
after one last lightning swipe, and trotted across the room. “Fluff,”
said her mistress, “this is our friend, Cyrus.” The kitten purred and
nosed Cyrus's foot.
“Thank you,” said the young man gratefully. “I also am not wholly
insensible to fine distinctions. Fluff, do you know how those ancient
barbarian parties looked and acted when they were called 'friend of the
state of Rome'? Well, regard me.”
His employer twinkled at him with her eyes. “I've sold you,” she
remarked.
“At a good price?”
“Yes. You were really very good.”
“It would have been kind to let me see myself before you bartered me
away into eternal captivity.”
“Kinder not.”
“You mean I shouldn't have liked your idea of me?”
“Didn't I say that it was _good?_” she returned with composed pride. “My
idea of you wouldn't be good, as modeling. This is the real _you_, the
man underneath.”
“That's worse. You think I oughtn't to like myself as I am.”
She looked up at him with intimate and sympathetic friendliness. “Well,
_do_ you?” was all she said.
“Whether I do or not, it's pretty evident what you think of me.”
“It ought to be. I've introduced you to Fluff. One can't be too careful
as to whom one introduces to one's young and guileless daughter.”
“Thank you.” For the first time in their acquaintance he smiled. The
smile changed his face luminously.
She tossed the tiny iron with which she was working into the far corner
of the studio. “That settles it,” she said. “I'm through.”
“For the day?”
“Wrong! All wrong!” she cried vehemently, disregarding his question.
“Why did you have to go and smile that way? I haven't done you at all.
Do you know what I've been sculping you as?”
“You wouldn't tell me, you know. Nothing very flattering, I judged.”
“As a disenchanted and uncontrolled drifter.”
“And now you think perhaps I'm not?”
“I don't know what you are, but I think I might as well be clicking the
shutter of a camera, for all I've done with you. The point is, that I've
come to the end of you for the present.”
“You don't want me any more?” he cried, aghast.
“If I did, you wouldn't have time. I've got you a real man's job.”
“What kind of slavery have you sold me into this time?”
“The steam-roller. I've used my influence--you don't know what a pull
I've got around here--and I can name my man for the late night-shift.
Will you take it?” His face was elate. “Will I take it! Will a duck eat
pie?”
“I'm sure I don't know. Will it?”
“It will if it can't get anything else to eat. How long is this job good
for?”
“All summer and more. How long are you?”
“Till released.”
“You have made a promise. I'll enter it in my ledger.” Which she did,
writing it down in her absurd little booklet with a delicious solemnity
of importance.
“But can't I come and sit for you afternoons?” he pleaded.
“How many wages do you want to earn? No; not at present. But Miss Fluff
and I are at home to honest working friends on Friday evenings. Come
here, Miss Fluff, and tell the new engineer that we'll be glad to have
him come and tell us about the job when he's learned it.” But the
kitten paid no heed, being at that moment engaged in treacherously and
scientifically stalking an imaginary butterfly along the window-sill.
“Before I'm banished,” said Cyrus, “may I ask a question?”
“You might try it.”
“Do you mind telling me your given name? Not for use,” he added, as
she looked up at him with her grave, speculative gaze, “but just as
a guaranty of good faith. I set great store by other people's names,
having been cursed since birth with my own Persian abomination.”
“I don't think Cyrus is bad at all,” she said. “Mine is Carol.”
“Oh,” said he blankly.
“Don't you like it?”
“It's a very nice name, for some people,” he said guardedly.
“You don't like it. Why?”
There was no evading the directness of that demand. “I never knew but
one girl named Carol,” he said. “She squinted.”
“What of it? I don't squint. Do I? Do I? DO I?”
With each repetition of her defiance she took one step nearer him, until
at the last she was fairly standing on tiptoe under his nose. Cyrus the
Gaunt looked down into those radiant eyes that grew wider and deeper and
deeper and wider, until his heart, which had been slipping perilously of
late, fell into them and was hopelessly lost. “Do I?” she demanded once
more.
Cyrus responded with a loud yell. Inappropriate as the outcry was, it
saved a situation becoming potentially dangerous, for not far below
those luminous eyes was a dimple that flickered at the corner of a
challenging mouth; unconsciously challenging, doubtless, yet--And then
Fluff, opportunely descrying her imaginary butterfly on the side of
Cyrus's trouser-leg, made a flying leap and drove ten keen claws through
the fabric into the skin beneath. Her mistress dislodged the too ardent
entomologist, and apologized demurely.
“You see,” said she, “you've become an intimate of the household. When
you're too busy to come and see us, Fluff and I will peek out and admire
you as you go plunging past on your irresistible course.”
“It's going to be a lonely job,” said Cyrus the Gaunt wistfully,
“compared to this one.”
“Nonsense!” she retorted briskly as she handed him a dollar bill.
“Here's your pay. You'll be too busy to be lonely. Good luck, Mr.
Engineer.”