Elsie spent the week-end in cutting out and making for herself a blue crêpe blouse, which she intended to wear on Monday morning. She also made a pair of black alpaca sleeves, with elastic at the wrist and at the elbow, to be drawn on over the blouse while she was working.
She put the sleeves, her shorthand pad and pencil, a powder-puff, mirror, pocket-comb, and a paper-covered novel in a small attaché case on Monday morning, pulled on the rakish black velvet tam-o’-shanter, and went off to Mr. Williams’ office.
Her first day there was marked by two discoveries: that Mr. Williams expected to be called “sir” in office hours, and that the name of the youth who shared with her a small outer room where clients waited, or left messages, was Fred Leary.
A high partition of match-boarding separated the waiting-room from an inner office where Mr. Cleaver sat. And if Elsie and Fred Leary spoke more than a very few words to one another, Mr. Cleaver would tap imperatively against the wood with a ruler. He was also apt to walk noiselessly round the partition and stand there, silently watching Elsie, if the sound of her typewriter ceased for any undue length of time.
She learnt from Fred Leary that there had never been a female typist in the office before, and that Mr. Cleaver had been greatly opposed to the introduction of one.
“The Old Man always gets his way in the end, though,” said Fred Leary, alluding to Mr. Williams.
“I knew him before,” Elsie asserted, to give herself importance. “Him and his wife were in our house for a bit. I knew Mrs. Williams too.”
“They said he led her a life,” remarked Leary.
“What sort of way?”
“Oh, I couldn’t tell a kid like you.”