Two months—yes, two weeks before—Darcy would have stepped meekly out and ruined her pattern by introducing the Riegel ornamentation. But all was different now. Andy Dunne’s encomium, “because yah’r game,” had put fire in her blood. There was a reflection of it in her cheeks when Mr. Riegel looked up at her in surprise and annoyance. He saw the same familiar figure in the same shabby, ill-fitting clothes. But now she was standing up inside them. And she, whose dull regard formerly drooped away from the most casual encounter, was confronting him with bright and level eyes.
“Suppose you give my way a trial,” suggested this changeling.
“Mebbe you know more about this business than I do,” he challenged.
“Not at all. But it’s my design, after all, isn’t it?” said the girl pleasantly.
Gathering it up with hands which somehow suggested protectiveness against the Philistine blight of Mr. Riegel, she bestowed it safe in her imitation-leather roll. “I’ll try to bring you another next week,” she promised.
“Wait, now, a minute!” cried the perplexed employer. “What’re you going to do with this one?”
“Try it on Balke & Stover.”
“Leave it,” he ordered. “Check’ll be sent.” He whirled around in his chair, presenting the broad hint of a busy back to her.
“Make it for thirty dollars, please,” said Darcy to the back.
Mr. Riegel performed a reverse whirl so much more swiftly than his swivel-chair was prepared for that it was thrown off its balance, and its occupant, with a smothered yelp, beheld himself orbitally projected toward a line of open sample paints waiting on the floor for a test. Mr. Riegel’s own person was the last medium in the world upon which he desired to test them, for much stress had been laid upon their lasting quality. He was sprawling out, fairly above them, beyond human help, it seemed, when something happened. Darcy, standing in that attitude of unconscious but alert poise which rigid physical training inculcates, thrust forth a slender but powerful hand, caught the despairing Riegel, as it were in mid-flight, brought him up all standing, restored him to the chair and both of them to the status quo.