Wednesday evening Una went out to Villa Estates to look it over again, and she conducted a long, imaginary conversation with the Boutells regarding the nearness of the best school in Nassau County.
But on Saturday morning she felt ill. At the office she wailed on the shoulder of a friendly stenographer that she would never be able to follow up this, her first chance to advance.
She went home at noon and slept till four. She arrived at the Boutells’ flat looking like a dead leaf. She tried to skip into the presence of Mrs. Boutell—a dragon with a frizz—and was heavily informed that Mr. Boutell wouldn’t be back till six, and that, anyway, they had “talked over the Villa Estates proposition, and decided it wasn’t quite time to come to a decision—be better to wait till the weather cleared up, so a body can move about.”
“Oh, Mrs. Boutell, I just can’t argue it out with you,” Una howled. “I do know Villa Estates and its desirability for you, but this is my very first experience in direct selling, and as luck would have it, I feel perfectly terrible to-day.”
“You poor lamb!” soothed Mrs. Boutell. “You do look terrible sick. You come right in and lie down and I’ll have my Lithuanian make you a cup of hot beef-tea.”
While Mrs. Boutell held her hand and fed her beef-tea, Una showed photographs of Villa Estates and became feebly oratorical in its praises, and when Mr. Boutell came home at six-thirty they all had a light dinner together, and went to the moving-pictures, and through them talked about real estate, and at eleven Mr. Boutell uneasily took the fountain-pen which Una resolutely held out to him, and signed a contract to purchase two lots at Villa Estates, and a check for the first payment.
Una had climbed above the rank of assistant to the rank of people who do things.
CHAPTER XXI
TO Una and to Mr. Fein it seemed obvious that, since women have at least half of the family decision regarding the purchase of suburban homes, women salesmen of suburban property should be at least as successful as men. But Mr. Truax had a number of “good, sound, conservative” reasons why this should not be so, and therefore declined to credit the evidence of Una, Beatrice Joline, and saleswomen of other firms that it really was so.