Celimene prophesied disaster when the enterprising partner showed her
the cable she proposed to send.
“Leave this to me, honey.” Mame sounded absurdly full of confidence. “I
know New York better than you. If New York wants a thing it wants it.
And if it thinks a thing worth while it don’t mind what it pays.”
“But are we so worth while as all that?”
Mame appeared to have not the least doubt on the point. She clapped on
her hat, sallied forth and sent the cable.
In four and twenty hours, less forty-five minutes, came the answer.
Four hundred dollars a week were offered with a contract for one year.
Mame was triumphant. “What did I tell you, honey? They sure want us
bad.”
Lady Violet marvelled. “Let us make haste and accept it, before they
change their minds,” was her advice.
But Mame did not agree. “Those boobs are going up. They know we are the
goods, else they wouldn’t have been so free with their cables at the
onset.”
“But--!” persisted Lady Violet.
Mame took paper and pen. She spent a tense five minutes on a piece of
careful if rather syncopated prose.
Original terms rock bottom. Sorrow. DU RANCE.
Lady Violet was constrained to laugh rather wryly over the fruit of her
labours. “Ours, I fancy, will be the sorrow.”
The undefeated little go-getter laughed, too, but for a different
reason. Once more she rose and crammed on her hat. Again she sallied
forth to the convenient post office round the corner in Dover Street,
while her friend was left wondering how she dared!
* * * * *
A further twenty-four hours went by. Plus twenty-five minutes on this
occasion, to be exact. And then appeared the stern Davis with cablegram
number three.
A Napoleon-at-Austerlitz look came upon Mame. “Keep the messenger,” she
instructed Davis before opening the envelope. Full of will as she was,
there could be no denying that her hand trembled and that her face was
pale. Suddenly she gave a whoop of triumph. “There, honey, what did I
tell you?” She tossed the cablegram to Celimene. “Seems to me that old
office calendar is right every time.”
Lady Violet read amazedly:
Terms accepted. Cable confirmation. DOBREE.
Napoleon-at-Austerlitz poised a majestic pencil and then dashed
grandly:
Mail two years contract instanter. DU RANCE.
The pregnant words were duly submitted to Celimene.
“Now then, honey, what about it?”
Lady Violet acknowledged her defeat with a cheerful grace. These
Americans were wonderful!
Mame produced a pound note and gave it to Davis along with the cable.
“For the messenger,” she said. But just as the emissary was passing out
of the door she changed her mind. “Come to think of it, I’ll send that
cable myself.”
The paper was handed back; and the redoubtable Davis went to dismiss
the messenger, while yet again Miss Du Rance proceeded to clap on her
hat. She had called to mind that an Anonymous highbrow had laid it down
in the office calendar that if you want a thing done well you must do
it yourself.
The office calendar had a sure trick of being infallible. Hence the
quick but firm steps of Mame along Half Moon Street, towards that so
conveniently near-at-hand post office.