Trubus tilted back and forth on his toes and tapped the ends of his plump fingers together. He was sparring for time. The girl looked at him saucily, and the offending visitor shrugged his shoulders as he quietly started for the door.
"Tut, tut, my dear! I shall reprimand the girl."
"You shall discharge her at once!" insisted Mrs. Trubus, her eyes flashing. "She will disgrace the office and the great cause."
Trubus was in a quandary. He looked about him. Miss Emerson, with a confident smile, walked toward the general office on the left.
"I should worry about this job. I'm sick of this charity stuff anyway. I'm going to get a cinch job with a swell broker I know. He runs a lot of bunco games, too—but he admits. Don't let the old lady worry about me, Mr. Trubus, but don't forget that I've got two weeks' salary coming to me. And you just raised my weekly insult to twenty-five dollars last Saturday, you know, Mr. Trubus."
With this Parthian shot, she slammed the door of the general stenographers' room, and left Mr. Trubus to face his irate wife.
"You pay that girl twenty-five dollars for attending to a telephone, William? Why, that's more money than you earned when we had been married ten years. Twenty-five dollars a week for a telephone girl!"
"There, my dear, it is quite natural. She is especially tactful and worth it," said Trubus, in embarrassment. "You are not exactly tactful yourself, my dear, to nag me in front of an employee. As the Scriptures say, a gentle wife...."
Mrs. Trubus gave the philanthropist one deep look which seemed to cause aphasia on the remainder of the Scriptural quotation.
For the first time Trubus noticed Mary Barton, standing in embarrassed silence by the door, wishing that she could escape from the scene.