Jeannette explained about her sister, and how happy the two were in their little Bronx flat. Her companion exclaimed about the baby.
She had had two or three places since the old publishing house suspended its selling campaign of the History. She had been in the business office of the Fifth Avenue Hotel Company until it closed its doors. Now The Gibbs Engraving Company employed her; she’d been there about a year, and liked it all right, but the constant smell of the strong acids made her a little sick sometimes. She and Jeannette fell presently to discussing Martin Devlin.
“Oh, he’s all right,” Beatrice Alexander said. “He came there about the same time I did. He’s an awful flirt, I guess, and he gets round a good deal. I don’t know much about him, except that he’s always pleasant and agreeable, never, anything but terribly nice to me. Everybody likes him. He’s one of our best solicitors. I heard from one of the men in your composing room, who’s a kind of cousin of mine, that you were with the Corey Company and were Mr. Corey’s private secretary, and one day I happened to hear Mr. Devlin talking to Mr. Gibbs,—Mr. Gibbs and his brother own The Gibbs Engraving Company,—and he said something about how he wished he could land your account but he didn’t know a soul he could approach. And then I mentioned I knew you. That was all there was to it, only he said you treated him something awful.”
Jeannette rehearsed the interview.
“He struck me as a very fresh young man,” she concluded.
“Oh, Mr. Devlin’s all right,” Beatrice Alexander said again. “He doesn’t mean any harm. He’s Irish, you know,—he was born here and all that,—and he just wants to be friendly with everyone. I suppose he was kind of hurt because you were so short with him.”
“I most certainly was,” Jeannette said, grimly.
“Well, he’s been begging and begging me to call you up. He wanted to take us both out to lunch, but I wouldn’t agree to that. I told him I’d see you about it first.”
“I wouldn’t consider it,” Jeannette said, indignantly. “The idea! What’s the matter with him?”
“I imagine,” Beatrice Alexander said shyly, “he likes your style.”