Mr. Mills makes a low bow. "A thousand pardons, my dear young lady!" says he. "I stand convicted of utter selfishness. But perhaps I can atone."
And with that he proceeds to put his proposition up to her. He tells her about the play, the trouble he's had tryin' to fit one special part, and how he's sure she could do it to a T. He asks her to give it a try.
"Go on the stage!" says Ruby, her big eyes starin' at him like he'd asked her to jump off the Metropolitan Tower. "No, I don't think I could. I'm going to be a foreign missionary, you know."
"A—a what?" gasps Oakley. "Missionary! But see here—that can wait. And in one season on the stage you could make——"
Well, I must say Oakley argued it well and put it strong; but he'd have produced just as good results if he'd been out in the square askin' the bronze statue of Lafayette to hand him down a match. Ruby drops back into her vague gazin' act and shakes her head. So at last he ends by askin' her to think it over for a day, and Ruby goes back to her desk.
"How absurd!" growls Oakley. "But I simply must have her. Why, we would pay her three hundred dollars a week."
I catches my breath at that. "Excuse me if I seem to crash in," says I, "but was that a gust of superheated air, or did you mean it?"
"I should be glad to submit a contract to Miss Everschott on those terms," says he.
"Then leave it to me," says I; "that is, to me and Nelson."
Did we win Ruby? Say, with our descriptions of what three hundred a week might mean in the way of Christmas presents to Uncle Ed, and donations to the poor box, and a few personal frills on the side, we shot that foreign missionary scheme so full of holes it looked like a last year mosquito bar at the attic window.