Senator W. A. Clark detests nothing more than to be interrupted when busy. One day he was in his office engaged in a business conversation when a petite woman, carrying a black bag, entered. With a compelling smile and an insinuating manner she approached the surly millionaire. Utterly insensible to his repellent mood and indifferent to his abrupt manner she drew from the depths of a bag a handsomely bound volume, the merits and beauty of which she began eloquently to descant upon.
Failing to embarrass her with arctic frigidity and impatient at her persistency under rebuffs all but vulgar, he turned suddenly upon the chattering woman and asked:
“Madam, do you know what my time is worth?”
She confessed it was a conundrum.
“Well,” he said, petulantly, “it’s worth $30 an hour!”
He turned away with the air of one who had settled the matter definitely beyond any further controversy. But he didn’t know the woman.
“Oh, I’m so grateful to you, Mr. Clark,” she replied, with a tone of pathos in her voice. “Thirty dollars an hour, did you say?”
“Yes; that’s what I said, and it’s cheap at that,” and he smiled cynically.
“Oh, I know it’s dirt cheap,” she chirped with winsome blitheness. “I am so glad you told me”—rummaging in her reticule, from which she quickly flashed out a purse gorged with currency. Moving near to the astonished millionaire, who now regarded her movements with unfeigned curiosity, she counted two bills, a ten and a five, off the roll. These she pushed along the top of the sloping desk toward him and said: “Yes, I’m glad you told me, because I hadn’t expected to get it so cheap. There is $15. Now, I want a half hour of your uninterrupted attention while I talk to you about this book.”