“Glad you’re enjoying a rest,” he saluted Dolores. “You need it, probably, as much as you deserve it. Or perhaps I should say you deserve it as much as you need it. It is a worthy thought, for it works both ways.”
The girl, having been foreadvised to trust the attorney, relaxed in his balmy friendliness.
“Doesn’t the truth usually work both ways?”
At her offering he rubbed his bald fore-top. “I don’t know about that. We lawyers learn not to expect too much of the truth. It has gone some if it works one way.”
The fact that he would not take off his top-coat gave each minute of the time that he did stay an added value. That he would not smoke somehow increased the fragrance about him of a fine cigar. That he gave her choice of chairs for him the preference lent companionableness to his manner of pulling up directly before her.
“The future has in it lots and lots of trouble that hasn’t been used yet,” he prefaced, suddenly grave, “and don’t think that you, lovely little lady, are going to get all of it. There are other non-union workers besides yourself.”
“Others?”
He evaded the question direct.
Trouble was the text of his small address—trouble ahead of a kind she had not known. She must prepare her mind for it; must gather her resources against an attack. And another would be protected in the protectorate of herself, one who deserved justification quite as much as she.
Meeting the silent, fluent appeal of her eyes, he set aside hyperbole; before her placed facts, as if on the salver of his outspread hands.