"He needn't!" cried Archie hotly.
"Then you'll take the job?"
Archie's grin began to grow until it communicated itself to the president, to the interested stenographer, to the very clock on the wall behind him.
"Like a mice!" he murmured cryptically at last; but Mr. Moore appeared to understand him....
It was perhaps fortunate that Ellen Neal was at home when he came bounding up the stairs that evening, or he might have burst with his tidings. As it was she thought he had been drinking, and began to prepare surreptitiously a good strong cup of black coffee. (She had had some experience with antidotes, had Ellen.)
"A salary and commissions—do you get me, wench?" he repeated for the third time. "I'm to run the whole shebang, advertisements and all, and put what boys I like on the road with it, while I sit back in me office like a young Pierpont Morgan directing operations! La-la-laihoo!" he yodled, suddenly seizing Ellen about the waist and one-stepping her across the room, to the imminent peril of the chandelier below.
"Mr. Archibald, behave! Me, a respectable spinster woman—" she panted.
"True! ''tis pity 'tis, 'tis true!' Away with frivolity now! I must remember the dignity of me office!" he declaimed, releasing her and striking the attitude of Napoleon crossing the Alps.
"It means better wages, don't it?"
"Wages, woman? A salary and commissions! Ha!"