“I can’t give you a salary,” he said. “We start our beginners on space. We pay seven and a half a column. You’ll make little at first. I hope Marlowe warned you against this business.”
“No,” replied Emily, doing her best to make her manner and voice pleasing. “On the contrary, he was enthusiastic.”
“He ought to be ashamed of himself. However, I suppose you’ve got to make a living. And if a woman must work, or thinks she must, she can’t discover the superiority of matrimony at its worst more quickly in any other business.”
Stilson pressed an electric button and said to the boy who came: “Tell Mr. Coleman I wish to speak to him.”
A fat young man, not well shaved, his shirt sleeves rolled up and exposing a pair of muscular, hairy arms to the elbows and above, appeared in the doorway with a “Yes, sir,” spoken apologetically.
“Miss Bromfield, Mr. Coleman. Here is the man who makes the assignments. He’ll give you something to do. Let her have the desk in the second row next to the window, Coleman,” Stilson nodded, opened a newspaper and gave it absorbed attention.
Emily was irritated because he had not risen or spoken the commonplaces of courtesy; but she told herself that such details of manners could not be kept up in the rush of business. She followed Coleman dejectedly to the table-desk assigned her. He called a poorly preserved young woman of perhaps twenty-five, sitting a few rows away, and introduced her as “Miss Farwell, one of the society reporters.” Emily looked at her with the same covert but searching curiosity with which she was examining Emily.
“You are new?” Miss Farwell asked.
“Very new and very frightened.”
“It is terrible for us women, isn’t it?” Miss Farwell’s plaintive smile uncovered irregular teeth heavily picked out with gold. “But you’ll find it not so unpleasant here after you catch on. They try to make it as easy as they can for women.”