“You seem a very comfortable set in your office,” he said when the lights went up. “All on good terms with each other, aren’t you?”
“I suppose so,” I answered. “It’s my first experience, you see. What age do you think I am?”
“I should say that you are young enough to be pleased if I guessed you to be older than you really are. Shall we say nineteen?”
“Eighteen next birthday, and that’s on Tuesday of next week.” (There’s nothing like giving a hint.)
“What have you been doing all these eighteen years?”
“Improving myself,” I said.
“You can give that up now you are perfect.”
The lights went down again, and there was set of pictures about a girl who was being loved by two gentlemen—one rather plain with plenty of money and the other much better-looking but apparently only a clerk. I thought over his last remark and tried to discover whether he was still joking or whether he really meant it—if he did mean it it was a very gratifying thing to be said, especially in view of the fact that mother is generally finding fault with me. She has often said that I’m the worst girl in the world for leaving my shoes about and not putting a book away when I have done with it, and all this going on day after day, week after week, had given me a kind of a lurking suspicion that I wasn’t quite up to the mark. When the pictures showed that the plain man’s money really belonged to the good-looking chap he began to talk again and went back once more to the subject of the post office. I would rather he had spoken of something else; I wanted to forget Maity and the rest of them for awhile.
“Are many of them engaged?” he asked.
“Two of them say they are,” I replied. “I should feel inclined to guess it was only a half-and-half affair in either case.”