The big gray man was real nice and regretful.
"I'm genuinely sorry," he said. "I really am. I happen to know Ember a little—I'd be glad to oblige him. But this—we don't need a thing here. I'm sorry Mr. Carney is away. It's unfortunate, but he is away, for some months."
He said a few more things polite, and he took down my name and address and said if anything should turn up.... And I happened to think of something. If we had to wait very long, it might bother some about the rent.
"You don't think it would be very long, do you?" I says. "On account of Mis' Bingy and my rent."
"I wish I could promise something more," says the big gray man, looking back on his desk papers. "I'm sorry. Good morning."
I didn't think till afterward that he'd never even troubled to ask me what I could do.
Then the little young man that had been setting loose in his chair, sat up loose, and spoke loose, too.
"I say," he said, "if she's a friend of Ember's, I might give her a card to the factory."
"I shouldn't trouble if I were you, Arthur," says the big gray man, sharp; which I didn't think was very nice of him.
But the little young man, tipping his cigar so's the smoke would keep out of his eyes, and squinting back from it, took out a card and scrawled on it and tossed it across the table toward me.