and the cornet artist next door could do to separate McCallum from the desk, and even when we worked him loose he didn't want to come out. When we'd got him into a chair, and he'd felt himself all over careful, he says to me:

"Torchy, how—how many times did she shoot?"

And when I gets back to the office Mr. Robert wants to know why I didn't let 'em know I was goin' all the way to Washington after them stamps.

"Chee!" says I, "but you're gettin' restless! Maybe you think I oughter travel by pneumatic tube? Huh!"

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CHAPTER V

WHERE MILDRED GOT NEXT

There's nothin' wins out surer in this town of New York than puttin' up a good front. If you've got the fur coat and the goggles on your cap, you can walk or ride on a transfer, and folks'll take it as a cinch that your bubble's back in the garage bein' fitted with a new set of hundred-dollar tires. Why, just the smell of benzin on a suit you've had out to the cleaners will give 'em the dream, if you throw your chest out right.

Look at the way Mildred has us goin'. Maybe you don't know about Mildred. Say, I'll bet if you met up with her on Fift'-ave. you'd hold your breath till she got by and wonder whether she was a Vanderbilt or one of the Goulds! But she floats into the Corrugated Trust offices more or less reg'lar every day, just the same, and does her little stunt on the typewriter at so much per. Honest, when I sees her sailin' in mornin's, with all her swell drygoods on, I'm just as liable as not to half break my neck openin' the door for her. That's what68 I did the first time I saw her, when I was new on the gate.

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"This way, lady," says I, and when she pikes right by and heads for the cloakroom I almost has a fit.

Maybe there's some hot ones down around Broad-st. that drives to business in cabs and pounds the keys durin' office hours; but for a genuine, mercerized near silk we stand ready to back Mildred against the field. She'd have an expert guessin', Mildred would. "Miss Morgan" is the way she figures on the payroll; but that never sounded rich enough for me.

It was the first week I was there that I begun to get a line on Mildred. One day the old man calls me in and hands me a letter that's been put on his desk for him to sign. He was 

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