Sam exclaimed in horror.
“You!” he cried roughly. “For you! Quite impossible!”
“Why for me?” said the girl.
In the distress at the thought Sam was jabbing his stick into the gravel walk as though driving the manicuring idea into a deep grave. He did not see that the girl was smiling at him mockingly.
“You?” protested Sam. “You in a barber's shop washing men's fingers who are not fit to wash the streets you walk on I Good Lord!” His vehemence was quite honest. The girl ceased smiling. Sam was still jabbing at the gravel walk, his profile toward her—and, unobserved, she could study his face. It was an attractive face strong, clever, almost illegally good-looking. It explained why, as, he had complained to the city editor, his chief trouble in New York was with the women. With his eyes full of concern, Sam turned to her abruptly. “How much do they give you a month?” “Forty dollars,” answered Sister Anne. “This is what hurts me about it,” said Sam.
“It is that you should have to work and wait on other people when there are so many strong, hulking men who would count it God's blessing to work for you, to wait on you, and give their lives for you. However, probably you know that better than I do.”
“No; I don't know that,” said Sister Anne.
Sam recognized that it was quite absurd that it should be so, but this statement gave him a sense of great elation, a delightful thrill of relief. There was every reason why the girl should not confide in a complete stranger—even to deceive him was quite within her rights; but, though Sam appreciated this, he preferred to be deceived.
“I think you are working too hard,” he said, smiling happily. “I think you ought to have a change. You ought to take a day off! Do they ever give you a day off?”
“Next Saturday,” said Sister Anne. “Why?”