“Dearie,—it’s so long ago; I’m sorry.... I’d rather hate to break with Kratzmer after all these years. You can’t help but make friends with the trades-people. Do you think Meyer’s would really be more high-priced, Janny?”
Jeannette would shrug her shoulders and carefully fold her napkin. They were dears,—she loved them best of all the world,—but they seemed so small and petty with their trifling concerns: matching braids and disagreeing with trades-people.
The dinner dishes would be cleared away. Jeannette would brush the cloth, put away the salt and pepper shakers, the napkins, and unused cutlery; then she would carefully fold the tablecloth in its original creases, replace it with the square of chenille curtaining, and climb on a chair to fit the brass hook of the drop-light over the gas-jet above.
Roy would arrive at eight,—he was always there promptly,—and she would have a bare twenty minutes to get ready. She would hear her mother and sister scraping and rattling in the kitchen as she dressed, water hissing into the sink, the bang of the tin dishpan, their voices murmuring.
She would be glad when her lover came. A flood of questions, surmises, hazarded opinions about office affairs, poured from her then. She was free at last to talk as she liked about what absorbed her so much; she had an audience that would listen eagerly and attentively to everything. What would Mr. Kipps do about Bertram, and if the manuscript was really lost, what would Mrs. Inness do about it? ... Did he hear anything about the row between Mrs. Inness and Miss Reubens? Well,—she’d tell him, only she wanted first to ask his advice about whether she should go to Mr. Corey and simply tell him that Smith had certainly never given her his message?
Roy would meet this eager gossip with news of his own. Mr. Featherstone had given Walt Chase an awful call-down for promising a preferred position he had no right to, and Stubbs was starting on a trip to Chicago and St. Louis. There was talk of putting Francis Holme in charge of the Book Sales Department, and Roy hoped he’d get it instead of Van Alstyne. And what did Jeannette think the chances would be of Horatio Stephens getting Miss Reuben’s job if Miss Reubens quit on account of Mrs. Inness?
Roy would tire eventually of this shop talk. He longed to reach the love-making stage of the evening; he was eager to tell her how much he adored her, and to have her confess she cared for him in return; he liked to have her nestle close against him, his arms about her, to hold her to him and have her raise her lips to his each time he bent over her. But Jeannette grew less and less inclined these days to surrender herself to these embraces. Each time Roy mentioned love, she would tell him not to be silly, and would speak of another office affair. It distressed her lover; he would fidget unhappily, not quite understanding how she eluded him. Again and again he would return to the question of their marriage. Did Jeannette think March would be a good month? It was three months off. Yes, March would be all right, but did he suppose Miss Reubens was really overworked? Roy didn’t know whether she was or not; she complained a good deal, he admitted. But now about where they were to live; he had heard of a little house in Flatbush that could be rented for twenty dollars a month. How did she feel about living in Brooklyn?
But marriage did not interest her for the present; she was too much absorbed in the affairs of the publishing company. Weddings could wait; hers could, anyhow. Just now she wanted Roy to help her guess the salaries of everyone in the office.
And when, as ten and ten-thirty and eleven o’clock approached, Roy, conscious of the passing minutes, would press his love-making to a point where Jeannette could no longer divert him, she would send him home. She would suddenly remember she had her stockings to wash out, or gloves to clean before she went to bed. She would realize at the moment, how dreadfully tired she was, and the morrow always presented a difficult day.
“You must go now, Roy,” she would say. “You simply must go. I’m dead and I’ve got to get some sleep. Please say good-night.”