"What a brain!" she cried, regarding him with mock admiration. "You must have been waving it with Hindes' curlers. Yes," she added, "you may take me out to dinner to-night, Tommy."
Thompson was in the act of waving his hat wildly over his head when Malcolm Sage came out of his room. For the fraction of a second he paused and regarded his subordinates.
"It's not another war, I hope," he remarked, and, without waiting for a reply, he turned, re-entered his room and closed the door.
Gladys Norman collapsed over her typewriter, where with heaving shoulders she strove to mute her mirth with a ridiculous dab of pink cambric.
Thompson looked crestfallen. He had turned just in time to see
Malcolm Sage re-enter his room.
Three sharp bursts on the buzzer brought Gladys Norman to her feet. There was a flurry of skirt, the flash of a pair of shapely ankles, and she disappeared into Malcolm Sage's room.
II
"It's a funny old world," remarked Gladys Norman that evening, as she and Thompson sat at a sheltered table in a little Soho restaurant.
"It's a jolly nice old world," remarked Thompson, looking up from his plate, "and this chicken is it."
"Chicken first; Gladys Norman also ran," she remarked scathingly.