"Please, sir," she said, "do you know any one in this building named Vibert—in an insurance office?" She pronounced the name with an effort of overcoming its strangeness.
There was a certain primitiveness in her speech; it was provincial, rustic—a fine ear might have called it uncouth.
Ogden was struck with her plaintive "please, sir." He had never before heard that literary form of speech in actual use.
"Well," he said, with the unceremonious kindness proper to the occasion and person, "I think you can learn something about him in the office of the Vesuvian—next floor below."
"Oh, thank you, sir!" She made a movement suggestive of an abbreviated courtesy; it was as much in the way of acknowledgment as her sense of strangeness and confusion of mind appeared to permit.
"The girl gave him a glance, wild and timid."
"Not that way," called Ogden after her, adding a benevolent postscript. "Here; come along down these stairs with me; I'll show you where it is."
She stumbled after him down the marble steps with a heavy-footed clatter that could hardly have been expected from her slightness, and with a timorous hold on the bronze of the hand-rail.