“Poor Henry’s doesn’t, no; nor the condition in which Miss Dodge keeps him—probably because she likes to win golf tournament cups with him. I mean, the next time you see her at a dinner the man beside her in that state may have another name. She changes ’em.”
“I see,” Elsie said. She looked absently at Miss Dodge, not aware that there could be anything in common between them, much less that in a manner they had shared a day of agony, no great while past. “She seems very lovely.”
“In her own way, yes,” her neighbour returned without enthusiasm. “The man on her left——”
Elsie laughed and interrupted. “What I meant to get at—if you don’t mind—was the name of the man on my left!”
“Of course you wouldn’t have caught it,” he said. “You naturally wouldn’t remember, hearing it spoken with the others.”
“No,” she said. “Yet I think I do remember that Cornelia spoke it a little more impressively than she did any of theirs.”
“That’s only because I’m in her father’s firm. The most junior member, of course. They use me as a waste-basket.”
“As what?”
“A waste-basket. When Mr. Cromwell and the really important partners discover some bits of worthless business cluttering up the office they fill me up with it. Every good office has a young waste-basket, Miss Hemingway.”
“But you haven’t yet told me this one’s name.”