“I’m kind of wondering about the dough.”
“The dough?” Lady Violet collected new idioms for their own sake, but somehow this Americanism had eluded her.
“What you call ‘the dibs’ over here.”
“My dear child, it won’t cost you a sou. In fact, there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be money in your purse.”
Mame’s heart gave a leap. A fairy godmother with a vengeance!
“I don’t get you.” Cinderella spoke half forlornly, half with joy. “Your ways aren’t my ways. I’m not half the go-getter that you are. Personally I have to look both sides of a dollar to see if it’s wearing out in the middle.”
“That’ll be all right. If only you feel inclined to ease the white man’s burden, in this case the white woman’s, you’ll not need to trouble much about dollars.”
All this seemed too good to be true, but Cinderella gave the fairy godmother a very respectful hearing.
“The fact is, at present I’ve more work than I can do. Or perhaps one ought to say more than one cares to do. It’s the weekly letter to the provincial papers that’s so troublesome. I don’t mind the books and the plays and the harmless cackle about the inoffensive creatures with whom one occasionally dines out. Most of ’em seem rather to like it, if you go a bit careful with the trowel. But it’s having to write puffs for tradesmen, boosting their white sales and their spring pyjamas, that makes one want to tear the bedclothes.”
Mame listened with intensity, but she didn’t speak. Lady Violet went on: “For weeks I’ve been thinking of advertising in the Times for a secretary. I don’t want to let the thing go; it pays like fun; and if I can find some good sportsman who is not afraid of the donkey-work she shall have a hundred pounds a year and her keep.”