Steve answered in rapt fashion: “I’ll have to talk to Miss Faithful for half a jiffy and then I’m free for the rest of the day–––” opening the door of Mary’s office and beckoning to her.
Coming into his office Mary nodded pleasantly at the Gorgeous Girl, who nodded pleasantly in return and settled herself in an easy-chair while Steve rehearsed the things to be attended to the following day since he was not to be at the office.
“I’m getting Miss Faithful ready to run the shop single-handed,” he explained, telling Mary details which she already knew better than he but to which she listened patiently, her twilight eyes glancing now at Beatrice and back again at Steve.
Outside the hum of commerce played the proper accompaniment to Steve O’Valley’s orders and Mary’s thoughts and Beatrice’s actions––a jangling yet accurate rhythm of typewriters and adding machines and office chatter, pencil sharpeners, windows being opened, shades adjusted, wastebaskets dragged into position, boys demanding their telegrams or delivering the same, phone bells ringing, voices asking for Mr. O’Valley and being told that he was not in, other voices asking for Miss Faithful and being told she was not at liberty just now––would they be seated? Trudy’s giggle rose above the hum at odd intervals, elevators crept up and down, and outside the spring air escorted the odour of hides and tallow and what not, grease and machine oil and general junk from across the courtyard; trucks rumbled on the cobblestones while workingmen laughed and quarrelled––a confusing symphony of the business world. While Steve hurriedly gave his orders Mary Faithful in almost the panoramic fashion of the drowning swiftly recalled the incidents of Steve’s life and of the Gorgeous Girl’s and her own as well, forcing herself mechanically to say yes and no in answer to his questions and to make an occasional notation.
“The Gorgeous Girl had never known anything but the most gorgeous side of life”
The panorama rather bewildered her; it was like being asked to describe a blizzard while still in it, whereas one should be sitting in a warm, cheery room looking impersonally at the storm swirl.
First of all, she thought of Steve O’Valley’s Irish grandfather, by like name, who spent his life in Virginia City trying to find a claim equal to the Comstock lode, dying penniless but with a prospector’s optimism that had he been permitted to live manana surely would have seen the turning of the tide. Old O’Valley’s only son and his son’s wife survived him until their ability to borrow was at an end and work would have been their only alternative. So they left a small, black-haired, blue-eyed young man named Stephen O’Valley to battle single-handed with the world and bring honour to his name.