The Wall Street Girl

Frances turned, suppressing a yawn.

“I suppose one of them will hang by his teeth in a minute,” she observed. “I wish he wouldn’t. It makes me ache.”

“It is always possible to leave,” he suggested.

“But Mother so enjoys the pictures.”

“Then, by all means, let’s stay.”

“They always put them at the end. Oh, dear me, I don’t think I shall ever come again.”

“I enjoyed the singing,” he confessed.

“Oh, Don, it was horrible!”

“Still, that song about the restaurant in the alley–”

“The what?” she exclaimed.

“Wasn’t it that or was it apple blossoms? Anyhow, it was good.”

“Of course there’s no great difference between restaurants in alleys and apple blossoms in Normandy!” she commented.

“Not so much as you’d think,” he smiled.

It was eleven before they were back at the house. Then Stuyvesant wanted a rarebit and Frances made it, so that it was after one before Don reached his own home.

Not until Nora, in obedience to a note he had left downstairs for her, called him at seven-thirty the next morning did Don realize he had kept rather late hours for a business man. Bit by bit, the events of yesterday came back to him; and in the midst of it, quite the central figure, stood Miss Winthrop. It was as if she were warning him not to be late. He jumped from bed.

But, even at that, it was a quarter-past eight before he came downstairs. Nora was anxiously waiting for him.

“You did not order breakfast, sir,” she reminded him.

“Why, that’s so,” he admitted.

“Shall I prepare it for you now?”

“Never mind. I haven’t time to wait, anyway. You see, I must be downtown at nine. I’m in business, Nora.”

“Yes, sir; but you should eat your breakfast, sir.”

He shook his head. “I think I’ll try going without breakfast this week. Besides, I didn’t send up any provisions.”

Nora appeared uneasy. She did not wish to be bold, and yet she did not wish her late master’s son to go downtown hungry.

“An egg and a bit of toast, sir? I’m sure the cook could spare that.”

“Out of her own breakfast?”

“I–I beg your pardon, sir,” stammered Nora; “but it’s all part of the house, isn’t it?”

“No,” he answered firmly. “We must play the game fair, Nora.”

“And dinner, sir?”

“Dinner? Let’s not worry about that as early in the morning as this.”

He started to leave, but at the door turned again.

“If you should want me during the day, you’ll find me at my office with Carter, Rand & Seagraves. Better write that down.”

“I will, sir.”

“Good-day, Nora.”

Don took the Subway this morning, in company with several hundred thousand others for whom this was as much a routine part of their daily lives as the putting on of a hat. He had seen all these people coming and going often enough before, but never before had he felt himself as coming and going with them. Now he was one of them. He did not resent it. In fact, he felt a certain excitement about it. But it was new–almost foreign.

It was with some difficulty that he found his way from the station to his office. This so delayed him that he was twenty minutes late. Miss Winthrop, who was hard at work when he entered, paused a second to glance at the watch pinned to her dress.

“I’m only twenty minutes late,” he apologized to her.

“A good many things can happen around Wall Street in twenty minutes,” she answered.

“I guess I’ll have to leave the house a little earlier.”

“I’d do something to get here on time,” she advised. “Out late last night?”

“Not very. I was in bed a little after one.”

“I thought so.”

“Why?”

“You look it.”

She brought the conversation to an abrupt end by resuming her work.

He wanted to ask her in just what way he looked it. He felt a bit hollow; but that was because he hadn’t breakfasted. His eyes, too, were still a little heavy; but that was the result, not of getting to bed late, but of getting up too early.

She, on the other hand, appeared fresher than she had yesterday at noon. Her eyes were brighter and there was more color in her cheeks. Don had never seen much of women in the forenoon. As far as he was concerned, Frances did not exist before luncheon. But what experience he had led him to believe that Miss Winthrop was an exception–that most women continued to freshen toward night and were at their best at dinner-time.

“Mr. Pendleton.” It was Eddie. “Mr. Farnsworth wants to see you in his office.”

Farnsworth handed Don a collection of circulars describing some of the securities the firm was offering.

“Better familiarize yourself with these,” he said briefly. “If there is anything in them you don’t understand, ask one of the other men.”

That was all. In less than three minutes Don was back again at Powers’s desk. He glanced through one of the circulars, which had to do with a certain electric company offering gold bonds at a price to net four and a half. He read it through once and then read it through again. It contained a great many figures–figures running into the millions, whose effect was to make twenty-five dollars a week shrink into insignificance. On the whole, it was decidedly depressing reading–the more so because he did not understand it.

He wondered what Miss Winthrop did when she was tired, where she lived and how she lived, if she played bridge, if she spent her summers abroad, who her parents were, whether she was eighteen or twenty-two or – three, and if she sang. All of which had nothing to do with the affairs of the company that wished to dispose of its gold bonds at a price to net four and a half.

At twelve Miss Winthrop rose from her machine and sought her hat in the rear of the office. At twelve-five she came back, passed him as if he had been an empty chair, and went out the door. At twelve-ten he followed. He made his way at once to the restaurant in the alley. She was not in the chair she had occupied yesterday, but farther back. Happily, the chair next to her was empty.

“Will you hold this for me?” he asked.

“Better drop your hat in it,” she suggested rather coldly.

He obeyed the suggestion, and a minute later returned with a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich. She was gazing indifferently across the room as he sat down, but he called her attention to his lunch.

“You see, I got one of these things to-day.”

“So?”

“Do you eat it with a fork or pick it up in your fingers?” he asked.

She turned involuntarily to see if he was serious. She could not tell, but it was a fact he looked perplexed.

“Oh, pick it up in your fingers,” she exclaimed. “But look here; are you coming here every day?”

“Sure,” he nodded. “Why not?”

“Because, if you are, I’m going to find another place.”

“You–what?” he gasped.

“I’m going to find another place.”

The sandwich was halfway to his lips. He put it down again.

“What have I done?” he demanded.

She was avoiding his eyes.

“Oh, it isn’t you,” she answered. “But if the office ever found out–”

“Well,” he insisted.

“It would make a lot of talk, that’s all,” she concluded quickly. “I can’t afford it.”

“Whom would they talk about?”

“Oh, they wouldn’t talk about you–that’s sure.”

“They would talk about you?”

“They certainly would.”

“What would they say?”

“You think it over,” she replied. “The thing you want to remember is that I’m only a stenographer there, and you–well, if you make good you’ll be a member of the firm some day.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with where you eat or where I eat.”

“It hasn’t, as long as we don’t eat at the same place. Can’t you see that?”

She raised her eyes and met his.

“I see now,” he answered soberly. “They’ll think I’m getting fresh with you?”

“They’ll think I’m letting you get fresh,” she answered, lowering her eyes.

“But you don’t think that yourself?”

“I don’t know,” she answered slowly. “I used to think I could tell; but now–oh, I don’t know!”

“But good Heavens! you’ve been a regular little trump to me. You’ve even lent me the money to buy my lunches with. Do you think any man could be so low down–”

“Those things aren’t fit to eat when they’re cold,” she warned him.

He shoved his plate aside and leaned toward her. “Do you think–”

“No, no, no!” she exclaimed. “Only, it isn’t what I think that matters.”

“That’s the only thing in this case that does matter,” he returned.

“You wait until you know Blake,” she answered.

“Of course, if any one is to quit here, it is I,” he said.

“You’d better stay where you are,” she answered. “I know a lot of other places just like this.”

“Well, I can find them, can’t I?”

She laughed–a contagious little laugh.

“I’m not so sure,” she replied.

“You don’t think much of my ability, do you?” he returned, somewhat nettled.

She lifted her eyes at that.

“If you want to know the truth,” she said, “I do. And I’ve seen a lot of ’em come and go.”

He reacted curiously to this unexpected praise. His color heightened and unconsciously he squared his shoulders.

“Thanks,” he said. “Then you ought to trust me to be able to find another lunch-place. Besides, you forget I found this myself. Are you going to have an éclair to-day?”

She nodded and started to rise.

“Sit still; I’ll get it for you.”

Before she could protest he was halfway to the counter. She sat back in her chair with an expression that was half-frown and half-smile.

When he came back she slipped a nickel upon the arm of his chair.

“What’s this for?” he demanded.

“For the éclair, of course.”

“You–you needn’t have done that.”

“I’ll pay my own way, thank you,” she answered, her face hardening a little.

“Now you’re offended again?”

“No; only–oh, can’t you see we–I must find another place?”

“No, I don’t,” he answered.

“Then that proves it,” she replied. “And now I’m going back to the office.”

He rose at once to go with her.

“Please to sit right where you are for five minutes,” she begged.

He sat down again and watched her as she hurried out the door. The moment she disappeared the place seemed curiously empty–curiously empty and inane. He stared at the white-tiled walls, at the heaps of pastry upon the marble counter, prepared as for wholesale. Yet, as long as she sat here with him, he had noticed none of those details. For all he was conscious of his surroundings, they might have been lunching together in that subdued, pink-tinted room where he so often took Frances.

He started as he thought of her. Then he smiled contentedly. He must have Frances to lunch with him in the pink-tinted dining-room next Saturday.

CHAPTER VI

TWO GIRLS

That night, when Miss Winthrop took her place in the Elevated on her way to the uptown room that made her home, she dropped her evening paper in her lap, and, chin in hand, stared out of the window. That was decidedly unusual. It was so unusual that a young man who had taken this same train with her month after month, and who had rather a keen eye for such things, noticed for the first time that she had in profile rather an attractive face. She was wondering just how different this Pendleton was from the other men she met. Putting aside for a moment all generalizations affecting the sex as a whole, he was not like any of them. For the first time in a long while she found herself inclined to accept a man for just what he appeared to be. It was difficult not to believe in Pendleton’s eyes, and still more difficult not to believe in his smile, which made her smile back. And yet, if she had learned anything, those were the very things in a man she had learned to question.

Not that she was naturally cynical, but her downtown experience had left her very skeptical about her ability to judge men from such details. Blake, for instance, could smile as innocently as a child and meet any woman’s eyes without flinching. But there was this difference between Blake and Pendleton: the latter was new to New York. He was fresh to the city, as four years ago she had been. In those days she had dreamed of such a man as Pendleton–a dream that she was sure she had long since forgotten. Four years was a long while. It gave her rather a motherly feeling as she thought of Pendleton from that distance. And she rather enjoyed that. It left her freer to continue thinking of him. This she did until she was almost carried beyond her street.

After that she almost forgot to stop at the delicatessen store for her rolls and butter and cold meat. She hurried with them to her room–hurried because she was anxious to reach the place where she was more at liberty than anywhere else on earth. She tossed aside her hat and coat and sat by the radiator to warm her hands.

She wondered if Pendleton would go the same way Blake had gone. It was so very easy to go the one way or the other. Farnsworth himself never helped. His theory was to allow new men to work out their own salvation, and to fire them if they did not. He had done that with young Brown, who came in last year; and it had seemed to her then a pity–though she had never liked Brown. This was undoubtedly what he would do with Pendleton.

But supposing–well, why shouldn’t she take an interest in Pendleton to the extent of preventing such a finish if she could? There need be nothing personal in such an interest; she could work it out as an experiment.

Miss Winthrop, now thoroughly warm, began to prepare her supper. She spread a white cloth upon her table, which was just large enough to seat one. She placed upon this one plate, one cup and saucer, one knife and fork and spoon. It was a very simple matter to prepare supper for one. She sliced her small portion of cold meat and placed this on the table. She removed her rolls from a paper bag and placed them beside the cold meat. By this time the hot water was ready, and she took a pinch of tea, put it in her tea-ball, and poured hot water over it in her cup. Then she took her place in the one chair.

But, oddly enough, although there was no place for him, another seemed to be with her in the room.

“Let me have your engagement-book a moment,” Frances requested.

Don complied. He had taken his dinner that night at the dairy lunch, and after returning to the house to dress had walked to his fiancée’s.

Frances puckered her brows.

“You are to have a very busy time these next few weeks,” she informed him. “Let me see–to-day is Wednesday. On Friday we are to go to the Moores’. Evelyn’s débutante dance, you know.”

She wrote it in his book.

“On Saturday we go to the opera. The Warringtons have asked us to a box party.”

She wrote that.

“Next Wednesday comes the Stanley cotillion. Have you received your invitation?”

“Haven’t seen it,” he answered.

“The Stanleys are always unpardonably late, but I helped Elise make out her list. On the following Friday we dine at the Westons’.”

She wrote that.

“On the following Saturday I’m to give a box party at the opera–the Moores and Warringtons.”

She added that, and looked over the list.

“And I suppose, after going to this trouble, I’ll have to remind you all over again on the day of each event.”

“Oh, I don’t know; but–” He hesitated.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Seems to me we are getting pretty gay, aren’t we?”

“Don’t talk like an old man!” she scolded. “So far, this has been a very stupid season.”

“But–”

“Well?”

“You know, now I’m in business–”

“Please don’t remind me of that any more than is necessary,” she interrupted.

“Oh, all right; only, I do have to get up in the morning.”

“Why remind me of that? It’s disagreeable enough having to think of it even occasionally.”

“But I do, you know.”

“I know it, Don. Honestly I do.”

She seated herself on the arm of his chair, with an arm about his neck and her cheek against his hair.

“And I think it quite too bad,” she assured him–“which is why I don’t like to talk about it.”

She sprang to her feet again.

“Now, Don, you must practice with me some of the new steps. You’ll get very rusty if you don’t.”

“I’d rather hear you sing,” he ventured.

“This is much more important,” she replied.

She placed a Maxixe record on the Victrola that stood by the piano; then she held out her arms to him.

“Poor old hard-working Don!” she laughed as he rose.

It was true that it was as poor old hard-working Don he moved toward her. But there was magic in her lithe young body; there was magic in her warm hand; there was magic in her swimming eyes. As he fell into the rhythm of the music and breathed the incense of her hair, he was whirled into another world–a world of laughter and melody and care-free fairies. But the two most beautiful fairies of all were her two beautiful eyes, which urged him to dance faster and faster, and which left him in the end stooping, with short breaths, above her upturned lips.

CHAPTER VII

ROSES

When Miss Winthrop changed her mind and consented not to seek a new luncheon place, she was taking a chance, and she knew it. If ever Blake heard of the new arrangement,–and he was sure to hear of it if any one ever saw her there with Don,–she was fully aware how he would interpret it to the whole office.

She was taking a chance, and she knew it–knew it with a curious sense of elation. She was taking a chance for him. This hour at noon was the only opportunity she had of talking to Don. If she let that pass, then she could do nothing more for him. She must stand back and watch him go his own way, as others had gone their way.

For one thing was certain: she could allow no further conversations in the office. She had been forced to stop those, and had warned him that he must not speak to her again there except on business, and that he must not sit at Powers’s desk and watch her at work. When he had challenged her for a reason, she had blushed; then she had replied simply:–

“It isn’t business.”

So, when on Saturday morning Don came in heavy-eyed for lack of sleep after the Moore dance, she merely looked up and nodded and went on with her work. But she studied him a dozen times when he did not know she was studying him, and frowned every time he suppressed, with difficulty, a yawn. He appeared tired–dead tired.

For the first time in months she found herself looking forward to the noon hour. She glanced at her watch at eleven-thirty, at eleven-forty-five, and again at five minutes before twelve.

To-day she reserved a seat for him in the little lunch-room. But at fifteen minutes past twelve, when Don usually strode in the door, he had not come. At twenty minutes past he had not come. If he did not come in another five minutes she resolved to make no further effort to keep his place–either to-day or at any future time. At first she was irritated; then she was worried. It was possible he was lunching with Blake. If he began that–well, she would be freed of all further responsibility, for one thing. But at this point Don entered. He made no apologies for having kept her waiting, but deposited in the empty chair, as he went off for his sandwich and coffee, a long, narrow box done up in white paper. She gave him time to eat a portion of his lunch before she asked:–

“Out late again last night?”

“Went to a dance,” he nodded.

She was relieved to hear that. It was a better excuse than some, but still it was not a justifiable excuse for a man who needed all his energies.

“You didn’t get enough sleep, then.”

“I should say not,” Don admitted cheerfully. “In bed at four and up at seven.”

“You look it.”

“And I feel it.”

“You can’t keep that up long.”

“Sunday’s coming, and I’m going to sleep all day,” he declared.

“But what’s the use of getting into that condition?” she inquired.

He thought a moment.

“Well, I don’t suppose a man can cut off everything just because he’s in business.”

“That’s part of the business–at the beginning,” she returned.

“To work all the time?”

“To work all the time,” she nodded. “I wish I had your chance.”

“My chance to work?” he laughed.

“Your chance to get ahead,” she answered. “It’s all so easy–for a man!”

“Easy?”

“You don’t have to do anything but keep straight and keep at work. You ought to have taken those circulars home with you last night and learned them by heart.”

“I’ve read ’em. But, hang it all, they don’t mean anything.”

“Then find out what they mean. Keep at it until you do find out. The firm isn’t going to pay you for what you don’t know.”

“But last night–well, a man has to get around a little bit.”

“Around where?” she questioned him.

“Among his friends. Doesn’t he?”

She hesitated.

“It seems to me you’ll have to choose between dances and business.”

“Eh?”

She nodded.

“Between dances and business. I tell you, this next six months is going to count a lot on how you make good with Farnsworth.”

“Well, he isn’t the only one,” he said.

“He’s the only one in this office–I know what I’m talking about.”

“But outside the office–”

She put down her fork.

“I don’t know why I’m mixing up in your business,” she declared earnestly. “Except that I’ve been here three years now, and have seen men come and go. Every time they’ve gone it has been clear as daylight why they went. Farnsworth is square. He hasn’t much heart in him, but he’s square. And he has eyes in the back of his head.”

She raised her own eyes and looked swiftly about the room as if she half-expected to discover him here.

“What’s the matter?” he inquired.

She did not answer his question, but as she ran on again she lowered her voice:–

“You’ve been in his office to-day?”

“He gave me some more circulars,” Don admitted.

“Then you’d better believe he knew you didn’t get to bed last night until 4 a.m. And you’d better believe he has tucked that away in his mind somewhere.”

Don appeared worried.

“He didn’t say anything.”

“No, he didn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything until he has a whole collection of those little things. Even then he doesn’t say much; but what he does say–counts.”

“You don’t think he’s getting ready to fire me?” he asked anxiously.

“He’s always getting ready,” she answered. “He’s always getting ready to fire or advance you. That’s the point,” she went on more earnestly. “What I don’t understand is why the men who come in here aren’t getting ready too. I don’t see why they don’t play the game. I might stay with the firm twenty years and I’d still be pounding a typewriter. But you–”

She raised her eyes to his. She saw that Don’s had grown less dull, and her own warmed with this initial success.

“You used to play football, didn’t you?” she asked.

“A little.”

“Then you ought to know something about doing things hard; and you ought to know something about keeping in training.”

“But look here, it seems to me you take this mighty seriously.”

“Farnsworth does,” she corrected. “That’s why he’s getting ten thousand a year.”

The figures recalled a vivid episode.

“Ten thousand a year,” he repeated after her. “Is that what he draws?”

“That’s what they say. Anyway, he’s worth it.”

“And you think I–I might make a job like that?”

“I’ll bet I’d try for it if I were in your boots,” she answered earnestly.

“I’ll bet you’d land it if you were in my boots.” He raised his coffee-cup. “Here’s to the ten thousand a year,” he drank.

Miss Winthrop rose. She had talked more than she intended, and was somewhat irritated at herself. If, for a second, she thought she had accomplished something, she did not think so now, as he too rose and smiled at her. He handed her the pasteboard box.

“Your two dollars is in there,” he explained.

She looked perplexed.

“Shall I wait five minutes?”

“Yes,” she answered, as he thrust the box into her hands.

That box worried her all the afternoon. Not having a chance to open it, she hid it beneath her desk, where it distracted her thoughts until evening. Of course she could not open it on the Elevated, so it lay in her lap, still further to distract her thoughts on the way home. It seemed certain that a two-dollar bill could not occupy all that space.

She did not wait even to remove her hat before opening it in her room. She found a little envelope containing her two-dollar bill nestling in five dollars’ worth of roses.