They were not friends in the office. Miss Torrance would not permit it. Directly they entered the building, all intimacy was put aside until five o’clock. They did not even lunch together, because Miss Torrance considered it a bad precedent. Yet, the morning after the meeting with that Mr. Martin, Miss Torrance, to save her life, could not help looking very often through the half open door of her office toward the end of the outer room where Olive sat.
“Nonsense!” she said impatiently to herself. “She’ll forget him in a week. She doesn’t know him—doesn’t know anything about him. He wasn’t at all the type to suit her. A very ordinary, commonplace young man! I’m glad I discouraged him. He was inclined to be troublesome.”
Olive was quietly working away, as usual.
“If she were—interested in him,” thought Miss Torrance uneasily, “she’d look different.”
The telephone on her desk rang.
“Miss Torrance speaking!” she said briskly.
“This is Sam Martin,” came the answer. “I wanted to ask you and—and—I don’t know her last name, but I think I heard you call her Olive—I wanted to ask you both to lunch.”
A sort of panic seized Miss Torrance. Was she never to be rid of this young man, never to have Olive all to herself again?
“Olive cannot come,” she answered, in a voice that trembled with anger.
“Then won’t you?” said he. “I’d like very much to talk to you.” She consented to that, and at twelve o’clock she put on her jaunty little hat and hurried out of the office, giving Olive a very strained smile as she passed her.