"Of course," the sales manager went on, in that I-lean-over-backward-being-a-good-fellow manner he assumed at times, "if you really feel that you have anything coming to you for what preliminary work you did, I'm sure I can make Hardy see it that way. He'll cut you in. That's a promise. Would a twenty, say, help out?"
He pulled out his wallet and opened it. Maizie took one glance at the smoldering hatred and contempt in the weary eyes of the man before the desk and then hastily dropped her own to the notebook on her knee. If only someone would sock the porcine jowl of her detested employer!
"You heard me," said Firrel with a cold distinctness that cut. "You can go to hell."
He turned abruptly and walked out. A moment later the outer door slammed.
"Never mind trying to piece out his torn prospect cards, Maizie," said POHAC's eminently successful sales manager. "We have a file of his daily reports. Hardy can work just as well from those."
"Yes, sir," said Maizie. Her rent was over-due, and the doctor had said—
She swept out of the office and down the hall to the washroom. Her nails were biting into her palms and her eyes were brimming.
"Oh, the louse," she moaned over and over again, "the louse, the dirty, dirty louse! If I were only a man—"
Then those lines of Burns came to mind again:
"O, wad some power the giftie gie us—"