She caught his arm and gazed up at him, her lips uncertain over what next to say.
He showed surprise at her touch and look, but leaned to her. And as he leaned, red color waved across his tan.
“Faith,” he said, “I’d hate to meet you goin’ home at night!”
At once Dolores regretted her impulse. Unless she wished to be further mistaken, however, she must continue.
“If you were a girl and needed work,” she asked, “how should you go about getting it?”
More slowly than it had come, the color receded from the young policeman’s face. With a deliberate movement, he lifted her hand off his arm.
“Miss, my baby’s not a year yet and her eyes are blue, but they’ve got something the look of your own.” He added the advice she had asked. “If I was a girl and a girl like you, sure I’d lock myself in my satchel until I got off Broadway. The satchel I’d check in some regular employment agency and there I’d stay until I got me job. There’s one in the next block, kept by an Irisher friend of mine who ain’t half as bad, believe me, as her near-French accent. Ask for Madame Marie Sheehan, née Mrs. Mary Shinn, and tell her Donovan O’Shay recommended you to her. Here, I’ll write it down.”
Upon a police pad whipped from beneath his uniform, he scribbled hurriedly; tore off the sheet; pressed it into her hand. With a kindly, “best o’ luck to you, miss,” he dived back into the traffic tide.
Dolores watched him disappear in the rush of it with admiration for more than his physique. She appreciated him more than she might have done two weeks ago. A thrill of pride tingled through her that the city, her wonderful New York, could choose so well.
Too bad, when she felt such confidence in him, that his name and the penciled slip were not the practical present aid he thought! To apply at a “regular” employment agency she would need a better reference than the too graphic one pressed upon her by the morning paper. The slip she placed carefully in her purse. “Née Mary Shinn” she would regard as to-morrow’s possibility, rather than the risk of to-day.