“She didn’t want to go dancing?”
“No.”
“That’s funny.” Richard Kuppelton tried to remember whether he had ever taken Caroline out and they had not danced. No, they had always gone to a dance. He wondered whether she liked Robert Holton better than him. This was a new thought and even more unpleasant than the suspicion that Robert Holton was trying to get his job. “She just likes to talk?”
“Yes, I guess everybody does.”
“That’s right, I guess.” Richard Kuppelton studied Holton’s plain tan shoes gloomily. One of the things he could not understand was why Robert Holton had come to work in this office. It was rumored that he was a friend of Mr Heywood’s but no one had ever been able to prove that. He had gone to Harvard before the war and to Richard Kuppelton that was the most important thing about him. It was also suspicious; he could not understand why a person with that education would do this job in Heywood and Golden unless—and Richard Kuppelton became gloomier—unless he were to be promoted over everyone.
“Looks like there’ll be a lot of changes after the first,” said Kuppelton.
“They tell me there usually are.”
“I suppose you want to end up in the other office, being one of the contact people.”
“I don’t care much. Whatever they want to do. I’d like to move up, of course.”
“We all would.”