Near his great desk, with a little table and typewriter, sat a girl, very pretty—he would see to that!... evidently his stenographer and private secretary.
As I stood by the railing, she observed me coldly once or twice, looking me over, before she thrust her pencil in her abundant hair and sauntered haughtily over to see what I was after.
Despite the fact that I informed her who I was, with eyes impersonal as the dawn she replied that she would see if Mr. Gregory could see me ... that at present he was busy with a conference in the adjoining room.
I sat and waited ... dusty and derelict, in the spick-and-span office, where hung the old-fashioned steel engravings on the wall, of Civil War battles, of generals and officers seated about tables on camp stools,—bushy-bearded and baggy-trousered.
Finally my grandfather Gregory walked briskly forth. He looked about, first, as if to find me. His eyes, after hovering hawklike, settled, in a grey, level, impersonal glance, on me.
"Come in here," he bade, not even calling me by name.
I stepped inside, trying hard to be bold. But his precision and appearance of keen prosperity and sufficiency made me act, in spite of myself, deprecative. So I sat there by him, in his private room, keying my voice shrill and voluble and high, as I always do, when I am not sure of my case. And, worse, he let me do the talking ... watching me keenly, the while.
I put to him my proposition of having my life insured in his name, that I might borrow a thousand or so of him, on the policy, to go to college with....
"Ah, if he only lets me have what I ask," I was dreaming, as I pleaded, "I'll go to England ... to some college with cool, grey mediaeval buildings ... and there spend a long time in the quiet study of poetry ... thinking of nothing, caring for nothing else."
"No! how absurd!" he was snapping decisively. I came to from my vision.