"Why?" asked Clancy.
"Oh, if you were already engaged, you'd not be husband-hunting the men who come apartment-hunting."
"I assure you that I'm not husband-hunting," said Clancy indignantly.
Miss Henderson shrugged.
"Of course you are, my dear. All of us are. Even myself. Though I've given it up lately. My peculiar style of beauty doesn't lure the men, I'm beginning to understand. Well, you can't help it if you're beautiful, can you? And I can't help it if one of my clients runs away with you. Just stay three months, and I'll give you, to start with, fifty dollars a week."
Clancy stared at her.
"You'll give me fifty a week—right now?"
"My dear, any musical-comedy manager would give you forty to stand in the front row. You could earn a trifle more than that by not being particular. I take it that you are particular. Should a particular girl earn less than the other kind? Is it common justice? It is not. Therefore, I will pay you fifty dollars a week. You ought to rent a hundred per cent. of the apartments you show. Also, every third client you deal with ought to be wheedled into having some interior decorating done. I can afford to pay you that."
Clancy gasped. Fifty dollars a week was not, of course, a tithe of what she'd expect to earn in the moving pictures, but it was a big salary to one who possessed about five dollars in the world.
"But you'll have to buy yourself some decent clothes," continued Miss Henderson. "That suit, if you'll pardon me, my dear, looks like the very devil. I have a dressmaker, unique thing— Oh, don't stare at the clothes I have on; I have to dress this way during office-hours. It makes me look business-like. But outside of business—it's different. You may trust my dressmaker. Cheaper—much cheaper, too. What do you know about interior decorating?" she asked suddenly.