“But her past?” Lucile whispered as she placed her slippers beneath the bed and drew back the covers. “Ah well, we shall see.”
Once during the night she was wakened by the girl, who was evidently talking in her sleep.
“Don’t let them. Don’t! Don’t!” she all but screamed as she threw out her arms for protection from some dream foe.
Putting her arms about her, Lucile held her tight until the dream had passed and she fell back once more into peaceful slumber.
CHAPTER V
“COME AND FIND ME”
“I’ll pull some wires.” The kindly face of Morrison, the man of fine bindings, gleamed as he said these words to Lucile next morning. “That’s the way things are done these days. I haven’t much notion how they were done in the past. But now, if I want anything, I pull some wires. For instance, your young friend whom you found in the Art Museum and whose name is Cordelia but whom you choose to call Cordie for short, wants work in this store. You ask me to pull wires and I pull ’em. I pull one and Miss So and So comes bowing out of her box of an office and I whisper what I want. ‘I’ll pull some wires,’ says she, putting on her best smile. ‘I’ll put in a wedge, a very thin wedge.’
“She puts in her thin wedge. She pulls some wires and Mr. So and So up on the eleventh floor bobs bowing out of his box and inclines his ear to listen.
“‘Ah! Yes, I see, I see,’ he murmurs. ‘I shall pull some wires.’
“He pulls some wires. A slip of paper appears. It is signed. It is given to your friend. She goes here, she bobs there, and presently here she is. She has accepted ‘the iron ring,’ wrapping packages with very gay company all about her, having a good time and getting pay for it. But let me assure you it could not be done without wires pulled and thin wedges inserted. No, it could not be done. Nothing these days is done without wires and wedges. Wires and wedges, wedges and wires, my dear.”
With this very lucid explanation of the way the world is run these days, the benevolent Morrison bowed himself away.