“But, Mart,” she remonstrated, “I want to pay off that Wanamaker’s bill! We can’t have a girl in the kitchen until we don’t owe a cent.”
“Aw, don’t worry so, Jan. You’re always scared we’re going to go bust or something. I’ll get a raise as soon as summer’s over. Gibbs is bound to come through ’cause he knows I’ll quit if he don’t. I bring in a lot of fine business to that outfit, and all my customers are dandy friends of mine. I’ll not be working for him at fifty per much longer.”
“Mart,” Jeannette said suddenly, “wouldn’t it be a good plan to have Herbert Gibbs and his wife to dinner some night and show them how nice we are and how nice we live and what a good dinner we can give them? You know it might help; he tells his brother everything, Beatrice says.”
“Great! Say, that’s a bully idea!” Martin was at once enthusiastic. “Herb would like it fine and so would Mrs. Herb. I’ll get some good old Burgundy and pour it into him and feed him some Corona-Coronas and he’ll just expand like a night-blooming cereus.”
And on this happy plan, still with an arm about her, her head pillowed on his shoulder, they drifted off to sleep.
§ 6
Some six weeks after her return to New York from Atlantic City, Jeannette arrayed herself in her braided broadcloth tailor suit, drew on her tan silk stockings and tan shoes, set the gray hat at a smart angle upon her head, added the touch of a fine meshed veil that brought the curling gray cock’s feather close to her hair, and paid her long-deferred visit to the office.
As she turned in at the familiar portals she was astonished at the difference between her present feelings and those of old. A year before she had entered the building with a hurried step, a preoccupied manner, her mind busy as she hastened to her work with ways of attacking and dispatching it. She had been conscious then that she was the “president’s secretary,” and had borne herself accordingly as she made her way through the groups of gossiping girls, aware they thought her haughty and unapproachable. To-day, she was Mrs. Martin Devlin,—a matron, smartly dressed,—come to pay a visit to the publishing house with the air of a lady who had perhaps arrived to select a book in the retail department or to enter a subscription. The dusty office atmosphere was alien to her now; the bustling, eager clerks, intent upon their affairs, seemed pettily employed; there was something ridiculous about it all to her. Yet less than three months ago this had been her world; all the vital interests of her life had been centered within these square walls. She still loved it, loved the building, the cold cement floors, the bare ceilings studded with sprinkler valves, loved what evidences of her own handiwork she recognized: the window-boxes, and the miniature close-clipped trees that stood in the entrance, the name of the house in neat gold lettering on the street windows.
Ellis, the colored elevator man, was the first to recognize her; he grinned, flashing his white teeth out of his black face, chuckling largely.
“Well, it certainly is good to see you; it certainly is like old times to see you ’round,” he said, rolling back the clanging door.