As I walked toward the first of these I could see out of the window the great back of the Massasoit Building, tan color against the bright blue of the sky. Pausing before I rang the bell, I leaned against the window ledge and spied down. The street looked like a small, narrow gully, dotted with tiny black figures, and the houses that fronted on it, extending back to the Massasoit, no bigger than match boxes.
I pressed the bell and as I waited turned and looked down the corridor, stretching away in its shiny scoured cleanness between the shut doors of offices. Just beyond the elevator shafts there was a branch hall and along the polished floor I could see the white, glassy reflection of another window. That was on the side street, one of those I had looked up at, and as I was thinking that, the door opened slowly and Iola peered out, with her eyes big and scared and a sandwich in her hand.
"Good gracious, Molly!" she cried. "I'm so glad to see you. Come in."
I hesitated, almost whispering:
"Will Miss Whitehall mind?"
"She's not here. I had a phone this morning to say she was sick and wouldn't be down, and Mr. Ford's gone out to lunch." She took me by the hand and pulled me in, shutting the door. "Jerusalem, but it's good to see you. I'm that lonesome sitting here I'm ready to cry."
She didn't look very chipper. Usually she's a pretty girl, the slim, baby-eyed, delicate kind, with a dash of powder on the nose and a touch of red on the lips to help out. But today she looked sort of peaked and shriveled up, the way those frail little wisps of girls do at the least jar.
"Isn't it awful?" she said as soon as she'd got me in—"Just the floor above us!"
I didn't want her to talk about it, but she was like the janitor—only a gag would stop her. So I let her run on while I looked round and took in the place.
It was a fine, large room, two windows in the front and two more on the sides. The furniture was massive and rich-looking and the rugs on the floor as soft to your foot as the turf in the Park. On the walls were blue and white maps, criss-crossed with lines, and pictures of houses, in different styles. But the thing that got me was a little model of a cottage on a table by the window. It was the cutest thing you ever saw—all complete even to the blinds in the windows and the awning over the piazza. I was looking at it when Iola, having got away with the sandwich, said: