“Haven’t a dress-suit?” repeated Mr. Haxall, with a perplexed air, and regarding Myles as though he feared for his mental condition. “Well, what of it?”
“Why, I thought the reason you engaged me was because I owned a dress-suit. Mr. Van Cleef told me so.”
“Oh,” laughed the city editor, tilting back in his chair for the fuller enjoyment of his merriment. “That’s a good one! And now it seems that you don’t own a dress-suit, after all. Well, I am sorry; but never mind, we will try to get along without it, and I will find something for you to do directly that won’t require one.”
So the confession was made and Myles had not lost his place, after all. He resumed his seat with a light heart and for another hour patiently awaited orders. In the meantime several men came in, wrote out their reports, handed them to the city editor, and were sent off again. Mr. Haxall filed most of these reports on a hook without even glancing over them.
At the end of an hour, when the office was completely deserted by all except the city editor and himself, Myles was again called by name.
“Now,” thought he, “I am surely to get an assignment.”
And so he did, though it was by no means such an one as he expected. Handing him a ten-cent piece, the city editor said:
“I find that I can’t take time to go out for lunch to-day, Mr. Manning, and as the office-boys seem to be absent, will you kindly run out to the nearest restaurant and get me a couple of sandwiches?”
It was disappointing and mortifying to be sent on such an errand, and for an instant Myles’ pride rebelled against it. Then the words “under orders,” together with Van Cleef’s advice, flashed into his mind, and with a cheerful “Certainly, sir,” he started off.
When he returned and laid the sandwiches, neatly done up in thin white paper, on Mr. Haxall’s desk, that gentleman said: