"We got a little room," he said; "you can have if Mrs. Linnevitch says so. I was going to give you more pay. We give you that room instead—eh?"
Mrs. Linnevitch gave her consent. She was a dreary, weary woman of American birth. When she was alone with her husband she never upbraided him for his infidelities, or referred to them. But later, on this particular day, having a chance to speak, she said:
"I hope you ain't going to bother this one, Linne?"
He patted his wife's bony back and shook his head. "The better as I know that girl, Minnie," he said, "the sorrier I am for what I used to be doing sometimes. You and her is going to have a square deal."
"I bin up to put her room straight," said Mrs. Linnevitch. "She's got a doll."
She delivered this for what it was worth, in an uninterested, emotionless voice.
"I tell you what she ought to have got," said her husband. "She ought to have got now a good husband, and some live dolls—eh?"
IV
New customers were not uncommon in the restaurant, but the young man who dropped in for noon dinner upon the following Friday was of a plumage gayer than any to which the waitresses and habitués of the place were accustomed. To Daisy, sitting at her high cashier's desk, like a young queen enthroned, he seemed to have something of the nature of a prince from a far country. She watched him eat. She saw in his cuffs the glint of gold; she noted with what elegance he held his little fingers aloof from his hands. She noted the polish and cleanliness of his nails, the shortness of his recent hair-cut, the great breadth of his shoulders (they were his coat's shoulders, but she did not know this), the narrowness of his waist, the interesting pallor of his face.