Mr. Porter had the type of emotionless eyes that can say one sort of thing far better than the eyes of more temperamental people, and he now met Katie's steady gaze with a stare of considerable significance.
Katie was rather sure that she understood.
"So that," she said, "if I didn't live with my people, I couldn't have the job?"
"So that," Mr. Porter corrected, "if a girl does get a position and lives with her family, she will be better cared for, and we will know that she is safe at home evenings."
Katie hesitated no longer. She took the pen and, opposite the query, wrote a quick "Yes." To be sure she was, on that account, obliged to invent the kind of work done by her father and the amount of the family wage; but she so needed the position that her active wit at once supplied the answers. More or less truthfully, she put a word in reply to the remaining questions, signed her name, and wrote her address.
Mr. Porter took the paper in his white fingers, read it slowly, folded it, indorsed it with several hieroglyphics, and placed it in a pigeon-hole.
"I am filing this with our other applications," he said. "As soon as your name is reached, I will see that you are notified."
Katie's jaw dropped.
"But I thought," she began, "I thought I was to get the job now. I—isn't Cora leavin', thin, after all?"
"Miss Costigan is leaving us, I understand," said Mr. Porter, stroking his whiskers; "but there are others—nearly a hundred—on the list ahead of you."