Lolly's card I timidly proffered. He took it, stared at it with an
astonished expression, and then snorted so loudly it made me think
of Estelle, and I felt a quaking fear that Lolly's card was a poor
recommendation. He spat after that snort, looked at me again, and said:
"Well, I like her nerve!"
Of course, as I was not aware of just what he meant by that (I
subsequently learned that Lolly had gone to work for O'Brien supposedly
as a stenographer, and then had written up and exposed certain
conditions in the yards), I stared at him questioningly, and he
repeated with even more eloquent emphasis:
"Well, I like her _nerve_! It beats the _Dutch_!"
Then he chuckled, and again scrutinized me.
"That all the reference you got?" he asked.
I produced Mr. Campbell's, and as I watched him read it with a rather
puzzled expression, I hastily produced Canon Evans's reference as to
my character, which my father had sent me for the Y. W. C. A. O'Brien
handed the letters back to me without comment, but he kept Lolly's
card, putting it carefully away in his card-case, and chuckling as he
did so.
"What do you know?" at last he said to me. "Good stenographer, are you?"
"Yes, very good," I eagerly assured him.
"Humph! How much salary do you expect to get?"
"I got ten a week in the West Indies," I said. I never even thought
that that "free board" at the hotel amounted to something, too. Ten
dollars was my salary, and so I said ten.
He hugged his chin reflectively, studying me, and after a moment he
said:
"I wasn't expecting to take any one on for a day or two, but so long as
you're here, and come so highly recommended,"--and he grinned,--"you
may stay. Salary fifteen per."
"Oh, thank you!" I said so fervently that he got angrily red, and
turned away.
The red-haired office boy, who had been acutely listening to the
conversation, now came up to me and pertly asked me if I was engaged.
Which insolent question I at first declined to answer. When I realized
that he did not mean engaged to be married, but engaged for the
position, then I said, with scarlet face, that I was.
"Red Top," as they called him, then showed me my desk, next to
Mr. O'Brien's, filled my ink-wells, brought me pens, pencils, and
note-books. I was inwardly congratulating myself that there was no sign
of a type-writer when the boy pulled up the lid of my desk, and, lo!
there was a fine, glistening machine.
I suppose some girls really take a sort of pride in their machine, just
as a trainer does in his horse. I confess that I felt no fond yearnings
toward mine, and while I was debating how in the world I was ever
going to copy the letters, Mr. O'Brien pulled out a slat on my desk,
leaned over, and began to dictate. All the time he was dictating he
was chewing tobacco, stopping once in a while to spit in a cuspidor at
his feet, and watching my face out of the corner of his eye. This was
a sample of the letters I took, and you can judge of my feelings as I
wrote:
Messrs. So and So.
Gentlemen:
I send you F.O.B. five hundred broken babies, three hundred
cracked babies, one thousand perfect ones, etc.
Broken babies, cracked babies, perfect ones! What sort of place was
this, anyway? The pigs' hair department was mystifying and horrifying
enough, and I _had_ heard that sausages were made from dogs and
horses; but a trade in _babies_--cracked and broken!
I suppose my face must have betrayed my wonder and perhaps horror, for
O'Brien suddenly choked, though I don't know whether he was laughing or
coughing, but he made a great noise. Then he said, clearing his throat:
"Got all that?"