The Wall Street Girl

“I’ll get it for you,” he said soberly.

“Oh, Don!” she whispered. “Sometimes nothing seems important but just you.”

CHAPTER IV

CONCERNING SANDWICHES

The arrangement that Barton made for his late client’s son was to enter the banking house of Carter, Rand & Seagraves, on a salary of twelve hundred dollars a year. Don found the letter at the Harvard Club the next morning, and immediately telephoned Barton.

“Look here!” he exclaimed. “I appreciate what you’ve tried to do and all that, but what in thunder good is twelve hundred dollars a year?”

“It is at least twelve hundred more than you have now,” suggested Barton.

“But how can I live on it?”

“You must remember you have the house–”

“Hang the house,” Don interrupted. “I must eat and smoke and buy clothes, mustn’t I? Besides, there’s Frances. She needs ten thousand a year.”

“I have no doubt but that, in time, a man of your ability–”

“How long a time?”

“As to that I am not prepared to give an opinion,” replied Barton.

“Because it isn’t when I’m eighty that I want it.”

“I should say the matter was entirely in your own hands. This at least offers you an opening, and I advise you to accept it. However, you must decide for yourself; and if at any later date I may be of service–”

Don returned to the lounge to think the matter over. It was ten o’clock and he had not yet breakfasted. As he had neglected to send any provisions to the house, Nora, acting upon his orders of the day before, had not prepared anything for him–there was nothing to prepare.

However, whether he ate breakfast or not was a detail. That is to say, it was a detail when he left the house; but now, after the brisk walk to the club in the snapping cold air, it had grown in importance. Watson, on his way into the dining-room, passed him.

“Join me?” he asked, waving a greeting with the morning paper.

“Thanks,” answered Don. “Guess I’ll wait a bit.”

Watson went on.

Don returned to a consideration of Barton’s proposal. He was forced to admit that the old lawyer had an irritating knack of ignoring all incidental issues and stripping a problem to a statement of irrefutable fact. It was undeniable, for example, that what Don might desire in the way of salary did not affect the truth of Barton’s contention that twelve hundred dollars was a great deal more than nothing. With a roof over his head assured him, it was possible that he might, with economy, be able at least to keep alive on this salary. That, of course, was a matter to be considered. As for Frances, she was at present well provided for and need not be in the slightest affected by the smallness of his income. Then, there was the possibility of a rapid advance. He had no idea how those things were arranged, but his limited observation was to the effect that his friends who went into business invariably had all the money they needed, and that most of his older acquaintances–friends of his father–were presidents and vice-presidents with unlimited bank accounts. Considering these facts, Don grew decidedly optimistic.

In the mean time his hunger continued to press him. His body, like a greedy child, demanded food. Watson came out and, lighting a fresh cigarette, sank down comfortably into a chair next him.

“What’s the matter, Don–off your feed?” he inquired casually.

“Something of the sort,” nodded Don.

“Party last night?”

“No; guess I haven’t been getting exercise enough.”

He rose. Somehow, Watson bored him this morning.

“I’m going to take a hike down the Avenue. S’long.”

Don secured his hat, gloves, and stick, and started from the club at a brisk clip.

From Forty-fourth Street to the Twenties was as familiar a path as any in his life. He had traversed it probably a thousand times. Yet, this morning it suddenly became almost as strange as some street in Kansas City or San Francisco.

There were three reasons for this, any one of which would have accounted for the phenomenon: he was on his way to secure a job; he had in his pocket just thirteen cents; and he was hungry.

The stores before which he always stopped for a leisurely inspection of their contents took on a different air this morning. Quite automatically he paused before one and another of them and inspected the day’s display of cravats and waistcoats. But, with only thirteen cents in his pocket, a new element entered into his consideration of these things–the element of cost. It was at the florist’s that his situation was brought home to him even more keenly. Frances liked flowers, and she liked to receive them from him. Here were roses that looked as if they had been plucked for her. But they were behind a big plate-glass window. He had never noted before that, besides being transparent, plate-glass was also thick and hard. And he was hungry. The fact continually intruded itself.

At last he reached the address that Barton had given him. “Carter, Rand & Seagraves, Investment Securities,” read the inscription on the window. He passed through the revolving doors and entered the office.

A boy in buttons approached and took his card.

“Mr. Carter, Mr. Rand, or Mr. Seagraves,” said Don.

The boy was soon back.

“Mr. Farnsworth will see you in a few minutes,” he reported.

“Farnsworth?” inquired Don.

“He’s the gent what sees every one,” explained the boy. “Ticker’s over there.”

He pointed to a small machine upon a stand, which was slowly unfurling from its mouth a long strip of paper such as prestidigitators produce from silk hats. Don crossed to it, and studied the strip with interest. It was spattered with cryptic letters and figures, much like those he had learned to use indifferently well in a freshman course in chemistry. The only ones he recalled just then were H2O and CO2, and he amused himself by watching to see if they turned up.

“Mr. Pendleton?”

Don turned to find a middle-aged gentleman standing before him with outstretched hand.

“Mr. Barton wrote to us about you,” Farnsworth continued briskly. “I believe he said you had no business experience.”

“No,” admitted Don.

“Harvard man?”

Don named his class.

“Your father was well known to us. We are willing to take you on for a few months, if you wish to try the work. Of course, until you learn something of the business you won’t be of much value; but if you’d like to start at–say twenty-five dollars a week–why, we’d be glad to have you.”

At the beginning Don had a vague notion of estimating his value at considerably more; but Mr. Farnsworth was so decided, it did not seem worth while. At that moment, also, he was reminded again that he had not yet breakfasted.

“Thanks,” he replied. “When shall I begin?”

“Whenever you wish. If you haven’t anything on to-day, you might come in now, meet some of the men, and get your bearings.”

“All right,” assented Don.

Within the next five minutes Farnsworth had introduced him to Blake and Manson and Wheaton and Powers and Jennings and Chandler. Also to Miss Winthrop, a very busy stenographer. Then he left him in a chair by Powers’s desk. Powers was dictating to Miss Winthrop, and Don became engrossed in watching the nimbleness of her fingers.

At the end of his dictation, Powers excused himself and went out, leaving Don alone with Miss Winthrop. For a moment he felt a bit uncomfortable; he was not quite sure what the etiquette of a business office demanded in a situation of this sort. Soon, however, he realized that the question was solving itself by the fact that Miss Winthrop was apparently oblivious to his presence. If he figured in her consciousness any more than one of the office chairs, she gave no indication of it. She was transcribing from her notebook to the typewriter, and her fingers moved with marvelous dexterity and sureness. There was a sureness about every other movement, as when she slipped in a new sheet of paper or addressed an envelope or raised her head. There was a sureness in her eyes. He found himself quite unexpectedly staring into them once, and they didn’t waver, although he was not quite certain, even then, that they saw him. They were brown eyes, honest and direct, above a good nose and a mouth that, while retaining its girlish mobility, also revealed an unexpected trace of almost manlike firmness. It was a face that interested him, but, before he was able to determine in just what way, she finished her last letter and, rising abruptly, disappeared into a rear room. Presently she emerged, wearing a hat and coat.

It was, on the whole, a very becoming hat and a very becoming coat, though they would not have suited at all the critical taste of Frances Stuyvesant. But they had not been designed for that purpose.

Miss Winthrop paused to readjust a pin and the angle of her hat. Then she took a swift glance about the office.

“I guess the boys must have gone,” she said to Don. “This is the lunch hour.”

Don rose.

“Thank you for letting me know,” he replied cordially.

“Most of them get back at one,” she informed him.

“Then you think I may go out until then?”

“I don’t see why not. But I’d be back at one sharp if I were you.”

“Thanks, I will.”

Don gave her an opportunity to go out the door and disappear before he himself followed. He had a notion that she could have told him, had he asked, where in this neighborhood it was possible to get the most food for the least money. He had a notion, also, that such a question would not have shocked her. It was difficult to say by just what process he reached this conclusion, but he felt quite sure of it.

Don was now firmly determined to invest a portion of his thirteen cents in something to eat. It had no longer become a matter of volition, but an acute necessity. For twenty minutes he wandered about rather aimlessly; then, in a sort of alley, he found a dairy lunch where in plain figures coffee was offered at five cents a cup, and egg sandwiches at the same price. The place was well filled, but he was fortunate in slipping into a chair against the wall just as a man was slipping out. It was a chair where one broad arm served as a table. Next to him sat a young woman in a black hat, munching a chocolate éclair. She looked up as he sat down, and frowned. Don rose at once.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you were here. Honest I didn’t.”

“Well, it’s a public lunch, isn’t it?” she inquired. “I’m almost through.”

“Then you don’t mind if I stay?”

“It’s no business of mine,” she said curtly.

“But I don’t want you to think I–I’m intruding.”

She glanced at him again.

“Let’s forget it,” she decided. “But you might sit there all day and you wouldn’t get anything to eat.”

He looked around, uncertain as to just what she meant.

“You go to the counter, pick out what you want, and bring it back here,” she explained. “I’ll hold your seat for you.”

Don made his way into the crowd at the rear. At the counter he found he had for ten cents a wide choice; but her éclair had looked so good he selected one of those and a cup of coffee. In returning he lost a portion of the coffee, but he brought the éclair through safely. He deposited it on the arm of the chair and sat down. In spite of his utmost effort at self-control, that éclair made just four mouthfuls. It seemed to him that he had no more than picked up his fork than it was gone. However, he still had his coffee, and he settled back to enjoy that in a more temperate fashion.

Without apparently taking the slightest interest in him, Miss Winthrop observed the rapidity with which he concluded his lunch. She knew something about being hungry, and if she was any judge that tidbit produced no more impression upon this six-foot man than a peanut on an elephant.

“That all you’re going to eat?” she demanded.

Don was startled. The question was both unexpected and pointed. He met her eyes–brown eyes and very direct. The conventional explanation that he had ready about not caring for much in the middle of the day seemed scarcely worth while.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Broke?” she inquired.

He nodded.

“Then you ought to have had an egg sandwich instead of one of those things,” she informed him.

“But the one you had looked so good,” he smiled.

“I had an egg sandwich to start with; this was dessert.”

“I didn’t know,” he apologized.

“You ought to get one now. You won’t last until night on just that.”

“How much are they?” he inquired.

“A nickel.”

“Then I guess I won’t have one.”

“Haven’t you five cents?” she cross-examined.

“Only three cents,” he answered.

“And you begin work to-day?”

“Yes.”

“It’s only Tuesday, and you won’t get paid until Saturday.”

“So?”

“Do you expect to make that éclair go until then?”

“I hadn’t thought much about it,” he answered uneasily.

“You don’t look as if you would,” she said. “You are new to this, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

He did not resent her questioning; and it did not occur to him to give her an evasive reply.

“Just out of college?”

“Last fall.”

“What you been doing since then?”

“Why, nothing,” he admitted. “You see, my father died only last month, and–”

“Oh, I see,” she said more gently. “That’s hard luck.”

“It makes a good deal of a difference,” he said.

“I know.”

It had made a difference in her life when her father died.

She turned to her éclair; but, as she was raising the fork to her lips, she caught his eyes and put it down again.

“Look here,” she said; “you must eat something. You can’t get along without food. I’ve tried it.”

“You!” he exclaimed.

“Indeed, yes.”

“Dieting?”

“Hardly,” she replied grimly.

He had heard of men going perforce without food, but he did not remember ever having heard of a woman in that predicament. Certainly he had never before met one.

“You mean that you’ve gone broke, too?”

“Why, certainly,” she answered. “The firm I was with first went broke, and it was a couple of months before I found another position. But that’s over now. What I want to know is what you’re going to do until Saturday.”

“Oh, I’ll worry along,” he answered confidently.

She shook her head.

“Worry won’t carry you along.”

She hesitated a moment, and then said impulsively:–

“Now, look here–don’t get peeved at what I’m going to say, will you?”

“I don’t believe it’s possible to get peeved with you,” he declared.

She frowned.

“Well, let it go at that. What I want to do is to lend you a couple of dollars until Saturday. It isn’t much, but–”

Don caught his breath. “You–”

She did not give him time to finish. From somewhere she produced a two-dollar bill and slipped it into his hand.

“Take this and get an egg sandwich right now.”

“But look here–”

“Don’t talk. Go get a sandwich.”

He seemed to have no alternative; but when he came back with it she had disappeared.

He sat down, but he could not understand why she should have gone like that. He missed her–missed her more than he would have thought possible, considering that he had met her only some two hours before. Without her this place seemed empty and foreign. Without her he felt uneasy here. He hurried through his sandwich and went out–anxious to get back to her.

CHAPTER V

BUSINESS

When Don came back to the office he found Miss Winthrop again at her typewriter, but she did not even glance up as he took his former place at Powers’s desk. If this was not particularly flattering, it at least gave him the privilege of watching her. But it was rather curious that he found in this enough to hold his attention for half an hour. It is doubtful whether he could have watched Frances herself for so long a time without being bored.

It was the touch of seriousness about the girl’s eyes and mouth that now set him to wondering–a seriousness that he had sometimes noted in the faces of men who had seen much of life.

Life–that was the keynote. He felt that she had been in touch with life, and had got the better of it: that there had been drama in her past, born of contact with men and women. She had been dealing with such problems as securing food–and his experience of the last twenty-four hours had hinted at how dramatic that may be; with securing lodgings for the night; with the problem of earning not more money but enough money to keep her alive. All this had left its mark, not in ugliness, but in a certain seriousness that made him keen to know about her. Here was a girl who was not especially concerned with operas, with books, with the drama, but with the stuff of which those things are made.

Miss Winthrop removed from her typewriter the final page of the long letter she had finished and rapidly went over it for errors. She found none. But, as she gathered her papers together before taking them into the private office of Mr. Farnsworth, she spoke. She spoke without even then glancing at Don–as if voicing a thought to herself.

“Believe me,” she said, “they are not going to pay you for sitting there and watching me.”

Don felt the color spring to his cheeks.

“I beg your pardon,” he apologized.

“It doesn’t bother me any,” she continued, as she rose. “Only there isn’t any money for the firm in that sort of thing.”

“But there doesn’t seem to be anything around here for me to do.”

“Then make something,” she concluded, as she moved away.

Blake, to whom he had been introduced, was sitting at his desk reading an early edition of an evening paper. Spurred on by her admonition, he strolled over there. Blake glanced up with a nod.

“How you making it?” he inquired.

“There doesn’t seem to be much for me to do,” said Don. “Can you suggest anything?”

“Farnsworth will dig up enough for you later on. I wouldn’t worry about that.”

“But I don’t know anything about the game.”

“You’ll pick it up. Did I understand Farnsworth to say you were Harvard?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Princeton. Say, what sort of a football team have you this year?”

Don knew football. He had played right end on the second team. He also knew Princeton, and if the information he gave Blake about the team ever went back to New Jersey it did not do the coaching staff there any good. However, it furnished a subject for a pleasant half hour’s conversation. Then Blake went out, and Don returned to his former place back of Powers’s desk.

“I’ll bet you didn’t get much out of him,” observed Miss Winthrop, without interrupting the click of her machine.

“He seems rather a decent sort,” answered Don.

“Perhaps he is,” she returned.

“He’s a Princeton man,” Don informed her.

“He’s Percy A. Blake,” she declared–as if that were a fact of considerably more importance.

He waited to see if she was ready to volunteer any further information, but apparently she considered this sufficient.

At that point Farnsworth came out and took a look about the office. His eyes fell upon Don, and he crossed the room.

He handed Don a package.

“I wish you would deliver these to Mr. Hayden, of Hayden & Wigglesworth,” he requested.

Farnsworth returned to his office, leaving Don staring helplessly at the package in his hands.

“For Heaven’s sake, get busy!” exclaimed Miss Winthrop.

“But where can I find Mr. Hayden?” inquired Don.

“Get out of the office and look up the firm in a directory,” she returned sharply. “But hustle out of here just as if you did know.”

Don seized his hat and obeyed. He found himself on the street, quite as ignorant of where to find a directory as he was of where to find Mr. Hayden, of Hayden & Wigglesworth. But in rounding a corner–still at full speed–he ran into a messenger boy.

“Take me to the office of Hayden & Wigglesworth and there’s a quarter in it for you,” he offered.

“I’m on,” nodded the boy.

The office was less than a five minutes’ walk away. In another two minutes Don had left his package with Mr. Hayden’s clerk and was back again in his own office.

“Snappy work,” Miss Winthrop complimented him. “The closing prices must be out by now. You’d better look them over.”

“Closing prices of what?” he inquired.

“The market, of course. Ask Eddie–the boy at the ticker. He’ll give you a sheet.”

So Don went over and asked Eddie, and was handed a list of closing quotations–which, for all he was concerned, might have been football signals. However, he sat down and looked them over, and continued to look them over until Farnsworth passed him on his way home.

“You may as well go now,” Farnsworth said. “You’ll be here at nine to-morrow?”

“Nine to-morrow,” nodded Don.

He returned to Miss Winthrop’s desk.

“He says I may go now,” he reported.

“Then I’d go,” she advised.

“But I–I want to thank you.”

“For Heaven’s sake, don’t!” she exploded. “I’m busy.”

“Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

He took the Subway back to the Grand Central, and walked from there to the club. Here he found a message from Frances:–

Dad sent up a box for the theater to-night. Will you come to dinner and go with us?

When Don, after dressing, left his house for the Stuyvesants’ that evening, it was with a curious sense of self-importance. He now had the privilege of announcing to his friends that he was in business in New York–in the banking business–with Carter, Rand & Seagraves, as a matter of fact. He walked with a freer stride and swung his stick with a jauntier air than he had yesterday.

He was full of this when, a few minutes before dinner, Frances swept down the stairs.

“I’m glad you could come, Don,” she said. “But where in the world have you been all day?”

“Downtown,” he answered. “I’m with Carter, Rand & Seagraves now.”

He made the announcement with considerable pride.

“Poor Don!” she murmured. “But, if you’re going to do that sort of thing, I suppose you might as well be with them as any one. I wonder if that Seagraves is Dolly Seagraves’s father.”

For a second he was disappointed–he had expected more enthusiasm from her.

“I haven’t met the families of the firm yet,” he answered.

“I thought you knew Dolly. I’ll ask her up for my next afternoon, to meet you.”

“But I can’t come in the afternoon, Frances.”

“How stupid! You’re to be downtown all day?”

“From nine to three or later.”

“I’m not sure I’m going to like that.”

“Then you’ll have to speak to Farnsworth,” he laughed.

“Farnsworth?”

“He’s the manager.”

“I imagine he’s very disagreeable. Oh, Don, please hurry and make your fortune and have it over with!”

“You ought to give me more than one day, anyhow.”

“I’ll give you till June,” she smiled. “I really got sort of homesick for you to-day, Don.”

“Honest?”

“Honest, Don. I’ve no business to tell you such a secret, but it’s true.”

“I’m glad you told me,” he answered soberly. “What have you been doing all day?”

“I had a stupid morning at the tailor’s, and a stupid bridge in the afternoon at the Martins’. Oh, I lost a disgraceful lot of money.”

“How much?” he inquired.

She shook her head. “I won’t tell; but that’s why I told Dad he must take me to see something cheerful this evening.”

“Tough luck,” he sympathized.

They went in to dinner. Afterward the Stuyvesant car took them all to a vaudeville house, and there, from the rear of a box, Don watched with indifferent interest the usual vaudeville turns. To tell the truth, he would have been better satisfied to have sat at the piano at home and had Frances sing to him. There were many things he had wished to talk over with her. He had not told her about the other men he had met, his adventure on his first business assignment, his search for a place to lunch, or–Miss Winthrop. Until that moment he had not thought of her himself.

A singing team made their appearance and began to sing sentimental ballads concerned with apple blossoms in Normandy. Don’s thoughts went back, strangely enough, to the white-tiled restaurant in the alley. He smiled as he contrived a possible title for a popular song of this same nature. “The White-Tiled Restaurant in the Alley” it might read, and it might have something to do with “Sally.” Perhaps Miss Winthrop’s first name was Sally–it fitted her well enough. She had been funny about that chocolate éclair. And she had lent him two dollars. Unusual incident, that! He wondered where she was to-night–where she went after she left the office at night. Perhaps she was here. He leaned forward to look at the faces of people in the audience. Then the singing stopped, and a group of Japanese acrobats occupied the stage.