“And are they in the habit of discharging assistants in this manner—throwing them out of a home and out of employment at a moment’s notice? Is Mr Cunnington himself aware of it?”
“It would be Mr Cunnington himself who discharged her,” was the buyer’s answer. “No other person has authority either to engage or discharge.”
“But there must be a reason for her dismissal!” exclaimed Max.
“Certainly. But only Mr Cunnington knows that.”
“Can I see him?”
“Well, at this hour he’s generally very busy indeed; but if you go down to the counting-house in the next building, and ask for him, he may give you a moment.”
“Thank you, Mr Warner,” Barclay said, a little abruptly, and, turning on his heel, left the department.
“She hasn’t told him evidently,” remarked one girl-assistant to the other. “I’m sorry Rolfie’s gone. She wasn’t half a bad sort. She was old Warner’s favourite, too, or her young gentleman would never have been allowed to talk to her in the shop. If you or I had had a young man to come and see us as she had, we’d have been fired out long ago.”
“I wonder who her young man really is,” remarked the second girl, watching him as he strode out, a lithe figure in a well-cut suit of grey tweeds.
“Well, he’s a thorough gentleman, just like her brother,” remarked her companion. “I saw him in his motor-boat up at Hampton the Sunday before last. He’s completely gone on her. I wonder what’ll happen now. I don’t think much of the new girl; do you? Does her hair awfully badly.” Unconscious of the criticism he had evoked, Max Barclay descended the stairs, passed through the long shops—crowded as they always were in the afternoon—into the adjoining building, and sought audience of the titular head of the great firm.