“Well, Cis Adair! If I didn’t begin to wonder if you’d get here!” cried a small, extremely-ornamented young person waspishly, as the boyish red-haired girl appeared, throwing off her hat and jacket and hanging them up rapidly, smiling her gay smile at the small person whom she succeeded.
“Sure—ly, Amelia! Don’t I always get there, whether it’s to work or to play? I’m only five minutes late, anyway,” cried the newcomer, harnessing her ears.
“Five minutes is five minutes when you’ve got to get home, eat and dress. I’ve got a date, I’d have you know, Miss Cicely!” retorted Amelia.
“Lucky you! Fruit market’s always closed for me; can’t even get a date, not ever!” sighed Cicely with a pensive droop of the head and an inimitable little wink at the girl on her farther side. “Sorry, Amelia! I’ll come five minutes early to-morrow, so get another date ready. Might I hint that you’d get there sooner if you started, now I am here, than if you lingered to reproach me?”
The other girls laughed, and Amelia Day flounced away with a toss of her head. It was recognized in the office that there “was no sort of use in trying to get ahead of Cis Adair.” Most of the girls liked her, a few of them were her devoted admirers, so it was only Amelia who ever really longed to damage her happy-go-lucky confidence in herself and in all her world.
“Funny little old Amelia!” Cis said after Amelia had gone. “Seems to disagree with herself so like fury, and not to be able to cut herself out of her diet.”
“Oh, Cis!” murmured Nan Dowling, Cis’s next neighbor, at whom she had winked. “You do say such ridiculous things, and such just-right ones! You ought to write. That’s Amelia all over; she does disagree with herself—little sour ball!”
“Thought we agreed not to fuss about her,” hinted Cis. “I don’t have to, as long as my shift follows hers; I don’t have more than a ships-that-pass-in-the-night, au revoir intercourse with Miss Day.”
“No, but I do! I have her from nine to one, except during lunch, right in your place! Why aren’t you on all through my shift, you blessed old duck, Cis?” cried Nan.
“Never could answer whys, Nan; nothing harder,” said Cis cheerfully. “Be glad you’ve got the chance to sun yourself in the light of my hair from one to six! And that we don’t get a whole lot of calls on our wires, usually, till after three, so we can ‘chin.’”