“I hope you will call next Saturday,” said Larry earnestly. “It is sure to be hot.”
“You don't deserve it or anything else that is good.”
“Except your pity. Think what I am missing.”
“Get in out of the heat,” she cried as the car slipped away.
For some blocks Miss Wakeham was busy getting her car through the crush of the traffic, but as she swung into the Park Road she remarked, “That young man takes himself too seriously. You would think the business belonged to him.”
“I wish to God I had more men in my office,” said her father, “who thought the same thing. Do you know, young lady, why it is that so many greyheads are holding clerk's jobs? Because clerks do not feel that the business is their own. The careless among them are working for five o'clock, and the keen among them are out for number one. Do you know if that boy keeps on thinking that the business is his he will own a big slice of it or something better before he quits. I confess I was greatly pleased that you failed to move him.”
“All the same, he is awfully stubborn,” said his daughter.
“You can't bully him as you do your old dad, eh?”
“I had counted on him for our dinner party to-night. I particularly want to have him meet Professor Schaefer, and now we will have a girl too many. It just throws things out.”
They rolled on in silence for some time through the park when suddenly her father said, “He may be finished by six o'clock, and Michael could run in for him.”