“Yes!... You hurt my arm so!... Oh, don’t! We must—”
Her low cry was an appeal to him to save them from spring’s scornful, lusty demand; every throbbing nerve in her seemed to appeal to him; and it was not relief, but gratitude, that she felt when he said, tenderly, “Poor kid!... Which way? Come.” They walked soberly toward the Golden flat, and soberly he mused, “Poor kids, both of us trying to be good slaves in an office when we want to smash things.... You’ll be a queen—you’ll grab the throne same as you grab papers offn my desk. And maybe you’ll let me be court jester.”
“Why do you say I’ll—oh, be a queen? Do you mean literally, in business, an executive?”
“Hadn’t thought just what it did imply, but I suppose it’s that.”
“But why, why? I’m simply one of a million stenographers.”
“Oh, well, you aren’t satisfied to take things just as they’re handed to you. Most people are, and they stick in a rut and wonder who put them there. All this success business is a mystery—listen to how successful men trip themselves up and fall all over their foolish faces when they try to explain to a bunch of nice, clean, young clerks how they stole their success. But I know you’ll get it, because you aren’t satisfied easily—you take my work and do it. And yet you’re willing to work in one corner till it’s time to jump. That’s my failing—I ain’t willing to stick.”
“I—perhaps—— Here’s the flat.”
“Lord!” he cried; “we got to walk a block farther and back.”
“Well—”
They were stealing onward toward the breeze from the river before she had finished her “Well.”