V. V.'s Eyes

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

Kern came at a walk. Eyeing Mr. V.V. as she drew near, she soon made out that he was taking it even harder than she had expected. She herself had accepted the loss of her position with the easy fatalism of the poor, though it was a serious enough matter, in the slack midwinter and following three weeks of idleness. However, after her sex, her present overweening instinct was to erase that sort-of-white look from Mr. V.V.'s face.

"It's on'y some of that sickenin' MacQueen's foolishness," she called out from some distance away--"and I was tired of workin' in that old nasty place anyway. Up and said he didn't have no job for me. Didn't have a job for me. So I just laughed at him and stayed round a little while, havin' a good time, and then he happened up to the bunchin' room and told me to git. So I gitted ... Lor, Mr. V.V.! I can find all the good places I want. Goodness me, sir! I'll get more orfers of jobs--"

"Come into the office," said Mr. V.V., turning back.

In the office, Kern, acting under medical instruction, sat down on the horsehair lounge with one leg gone, and told her simple story in detail.

In these weeks, while she had gone down with mild pleurisy, been successfully "tapped" and haled back to something like an economically valuable condition, the work of the world had marched on. That another operative sat now on Kern's stool and manipulated Kern's machine might appear natural enough, as the superintendent, it seemed, had insisted with his sour smile. But this was not to consider Kern's exceptional skilfulness, known and recognized throughout the Heth Works. Replace a girl who could bunch sixty-five hundred cheroots in a single day? No, no, you could hardly do that....

For this dismissal there was an explanation, and it was not hidden from the young physician. He spoke slowly, struggling not to betray the murder in his heart.

"The devil's doing this because he knows you're a friend of mine. He hits you to punish me.... By George, I'll show him!"

The intensity of his face, which in all moods looked somehow kind-of-sorrowful to her, made Kern quite unhappy. She was moved by a great desire to soothe Mr. V.V., to conjure a smile from him....

"Lor, Mr. V.V.! What do you and 'me care for his carryin's on? We can get on heaps better without him than he can without Me! The Consolidated'll jump down my throat--"

"You are going back to the Works," spoke Mr. V.V., in his repressed voice.