"Thank you very much. I should like it exceedingly, if it isn't too much trouble," said the stranger. "It hardly seems fair to let you bother with it if the houses are not in your hands."
"It isn't very much trouble to jot down a few addresses," returned the clerk with a smile. "Dan, suppose you do it. Copy the numbers and names marked on this list." He tossed a paper over on Dan's desk as he spoke, then pushed a chair forward for the tall young man, with a gesture inviting him to take it, and returned to his own work.
Dan Lipton was sharpening a pencil. He shifted the knife into his left hand holding the pencil, and with his right reached across and laid the list of bachelor apartments on Happie's desk. "Here, junior clerk," he said. "That's about your size job. You do it."
Happie flushed. She was entirely ready to do anything any one asked of her, but she did not like the manner of the asking, and the fact that neither of Mr. Felton's older assistants had heard the saucy transfer, while the stranger had and was regarding her with surprise, and for the first time, made it particularly trying.
"If you don't care to do what you are told, Dan Lipton, you must speak to me properly if you hope to get me to help you," she said softly.
The boy laughed insolently. "Come, puss, don't get your back up," he said, leaning so far over the desk at which Happie sat that she almost fell off the other side of her stool, retreating from him. "You know you'll do anything I ask you. Don't pretend you're mad, just to get me to notice you. You're a nice little puss, if you're not stroked the wrong way."
Happie flushed scarlet. "Get off this desk," she said. "And if you dare to speak one more impertinent word I'll box your ears, and tell Mr. Felton why I did it."
She looked perfectly capable of carrying out her threat, but her anger delighted Dan's impish mood. He lolled forward a little further instead of obeying Happie's order to get back from her desk. He was evidently rolling up some sweet morsel of impertinence under his tongue, and there is no telling what form it might have taken but that a strong, nervous hand took him by the shoulder, while another stole up and seized him somewhere under his coat with a refreshing twist. Master Dan was straightened up vigorously, lifted from his stool, set down on it again with emphasis, and a sound cuff was administered first to his right and then to his left ear by the hand that relinquished his waistband.
"Now, then, sir," said the stranger in his delicious English, all labials, aspirates and vowels, apparently, "now, then, sir, you're only a cub but you need licking into shape, and I should be delighted to help in the task if I ever heard you speaking again to a young girl as I just heard you speak to this one." He turned to the amazed other two who had seen or heard nothing that preceded Dan's elevation and punishment, and smiled as he settled his cuffs. "I beg your pardon, I'm sure, if I've interfered in the discipline of this office, but this little girl was being annoyed by that stupid boy of yours, and I took it on myself to cuff him. I hope you don't mind."