The big room was cut across by a long counter, on which a young man lounged in his shirt-sleeves, a green eye-shade pushed back on his head. Behind him telegraph instruments clattered loudly, disturbing the stifling quiet of the hot morning. The young man looked at her curiously.
"Manager? Won't I do?" he asked.
She heard her voice quavering:
"I'd rather see him—if he's busy—I could—wait."
The manager rose from the desk where he had been sitting. He was a tall, thin man, with thin hair combed carefully over the top of his head. His lips were thin, too, and there were deep creases on either side of his mouth, like parentheses. His eyes looked her over, interested. He was sorry, he said. He didn't need another operator. She had experience?
She was a graduate of Weeks' School of Telegraphy, she told him breathlessly. She could send perfectly, she wasn't so sure of her receiving, but she would be awfully careful not to make mistakes. She had to have a job, she just had to have a job; it didn't matter how much it paid, anything. She felt that she could not walk out of that office. She clung to the edge of the counter as if she were drowning and it were a life-line.
"Well—come in. I'll see what you can do," he said. He swung open a door in the counter, and she followed him between the tables. There was a dusty instrument on a battered desk, back by the big switchboard. The manager took a message from a hook and gave it to her. "Let's hear you send that."
She began painstakingly. The young man with the eye-shade had wandered over. He stood leaning against a table, listening, and after she had made a few letters she felt that a glance passed between him and the manager, over her head. She finished the message, even adding a careful period. She thought she had done very well. When she looked up the manager said kindly:
"Not so bad! You'll be an operator some day."
"If you'll only give me a chance," she pleaded.