“You’re losing a hair—” Nancy began, but Dick and Billy exchanged glances and began rubbing their hands together energetically and enthusiastically.
“I’m sorry,” Nancy said crisply, “but you’re a little too tall for our purpose.”
“And too blonde,” Betty added with a bland dismissing smile. “We’re looking for a special type of girl.”
“I understood you were looking for a waitress,” the girl said pertly, with her eyes on Billy.
“I was,” Billy answered, “but I’m not now. My—my wife won’t let me.” He waved an inclusive hand in the direction of Nancy and Betty.
“If you don’t behave,” Nancy said, while they waited for Michael to bring in the next 28 girl, “you can’t stay. If that is the kind of girl you men find attractive then my restaurant is doomed from the beginning. I wouldn’t have that girl in my employ for—”
Before she could begin again, applicant number two stood before them,—a comfortable, kind-eyed girl, no longer very young but with efficiency written all over her, despite the shyness that beset her.
Nancy rubbed her hands with satisfaction and looked at Betty, who beamed back at her. The girl, encouraged by Nancy’s kindly smile took a step forward, and began to recite her qualifications for the position. Dick fumbled with a fountain-pen which he placed elaborately behind his ear for an instant, and then as ostentatiously removed.
“I think you’re losing a hairpin, Dick,” Billy suggested solicitously, as Nancy, ignoring their existence entirely, proceeded to make terms with the newcomer.
The next girl created a diversion—being palpably an adventuress out of a job and impressing none of the quartette as being interesting enough to deserve one,—but the two girls who followed her were bright and sprightly 29 creatures, disarmingly graceful and ingenuous, of whom the entire quartette approved. They were twin sisters, they said, Dolly and Molly, and they had always had places together ever since they had begun working out.