“I want to see Mr Goble.”
“Zout!” said the Pimple King, and returned to his paper.
There will, no doubt, always be class distinctions. Sparta had her kings and her helots, King Arthur’s Round Table its knights and its scullions, America her Simon Legree and her Uncle Tom. But in no nation and at no period of history has any one ever been so brutally superior to any one else as is the Broadway theatrical office-boy to the caller who wishes to see the manager. Thomas Jefferson held these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Theatrical office-boys do not see eye to eye with Thomas. From their pinnacle they look down on the common herd, the canaille, and despise them. They coldly question their right to live.
Jill turned pink. Mr Brown, her guide and mentor, foreseeing this situation, had, she remembered, recommended “pushing the office-boy in the face”: and for a moment she felt like following his advice. Prudence, or the fact that he was out of reach behind the brass bars, restrained her. Without further delay she made for the door of the inner room. That was her objective, and she did not intend to be diverted from it. Her fingers were on the handle before any of those present divined her intention. Then the stenographer stopped typing and sat with raised fingers, aghast. The girl at the telephone broke off in mid-sentence and stared round over her shoulder. Ralph, the office-boy, outraged, dropped his paper and constituted himself the spokesman of the invaded force.
“Hey!”
Jill stopped and eyed the lad militantly.
“Were you speaking to me?”
“Yes, I was speaking to you!”
“Don’t do it again with your mouth full,” said Jill, turning to the door.
The belligerent fire in the office-boy’s pink-rimmed eyes was suddenly dimmed by a gush of water. It was not remorse that caused him to weep, however. In the heat of the moment he had swallowed a large, jagged piece of candy, and he was suffering severely.