In the corridor she passed three young stenographers and heard one of them cry: “Yes, but I don’t care if old Alfalfa goes on a rampage twenty-five hours a day. I’m through. Listen, May, say, what d’you know about me? I’m engaged! No, honest, straight I am! Look at me ring! Aw, it is not; it’s a regular engagement-ring. I’m going to be out of this hell-hole in two weeks, and Papa Pemberton can work off his temper on somebody else. Me, I’m going to do a slumber marathon till noon every day.”
“Gee!”
“Engaged!”
—said the other girls, and—
“Engaged! Going to sleep till noon every day. And not see Mr. Ross or Mr. Pemberton! That’s my idea of heaven!” thought Una.
There was a pile of inquiring memoes from Mr. Pemberton and the several department heads on her desk. As she looked at them Una reached the point of active protest.
“S. Herbert runs for shelter when the storm breaks, and leaves me here to stand it. Why isn’t he supposed to be here on the job just as much as I am?” she declaimed. “Why haven’t I the nerve to jump up and go out for a cup of tea the way he would? By jiminy! I will!”
She was afraid of the indefinite menace concealed in all the Pemberton system as she signaled an elevator. But she did not answer a word when the hall-attendant said, “You are going out, Miss Golden?”
She went to a German-Jewish bakery and lunch-room, and reflectively got down thin coffee served in a thick cup, a sugar-warted Kaffeekuche, and two crullers. She was less willing to go back to work than she had been in her refuge in the wash-room. She felt that she would rather be dead than return and subject herself to the strain. She was “through,” like the little engaged girl. She was a “quitter.”
For half an hour she remained in the office, but she left promptly at five-thirty, though her desk was choked with work and though Mr. Ross telephoned that he would be back before six, which was his chivalrous way of demanding that she stay till seven.