"Certainly," I responded, and I followed her up two long flights, and into a front chamber, where in the bright light I saw her distinctly for the first time.
The reader will expect—certainly the feminine reader—a description of the sight that met my eyes, and how can I give it? A relation of that sort always seems to me but a modified version of the record of a prisoner at a police station, where he is put under a measuring machine, stood on scales and pumped as to his ancestry and previous record as a criminal.
The impression made on me at that moment by Miss May was wholly general. She was not handsome, in the ordinary acceptation of that term, but very engaging. Her smile put me much at my ease.
I could have told you no more, had you met me that evening. All that I knew or cared to know, before I had taken the chair to which she motioned me, was that out of the million women in Greater New York, I would choose her, and only her, were they presented for my approval one by one.
She was evidently waiting for me to begin the conversation, after the manner of a discreet young woman in the presence for the first time of a possible employer. I made the excuse that the stairs were long, to explain my shortness of breath. For I found it very difficult to talk.
She was kind enough to admit that the stairs were hard. She also made some allusion to the weather, and to the unseasonableness of the temperature, for although it was at the very end of the year there had been hardly any snow and very little cold. This helped me along and finally I managed to reach the business on hand.
"I have received a great many answers to my advertisement," I said, "and a certain number seem to have been sent in a spirit of mischief rather than seriousness. I hope that was not the case with yours."
She shook her head and smiled faintly.
"How shall we begin, then?" I asked. "Shall I submit a few questions to you, or would you rather put some queries of your own?"
"As you please," she said, and I noted that there was a confidence in her manner that seemed at variance with her appearance. "Perhaps I may inquire, to commence with, what are the duties of the position."