Then he looks up. Well, say, you talk about your fadin' sunsets! Nothin' I ever see beat the way the boss lost his crushed raspb'rry face tint and bleached out salmon pink. "Why—why—er—are you sure this is some of your work, young woman?"

"Oh yes, indeed," says she, kind of gurgly and aristocratic and as sweet as pie, "that's mine. But you've made so many horrid marks on it that I shall have to do it all over again."

"Yes," says he, "I'm afraid that's so. But we have a way here, you know, of spelling explicit with a C instead of an S."

"Ruhlly?" says she. "How odd!"

"It's one of our fads, too," goes on the old man, "not to spell Corrugated g-a-i-t-e-d. We've simplified it by leaving out the I. Of course, we don't expect you to learn all these things at once; but pick 'em up as fast as you71 can. That—that's all. Thank you very much, Miss—er——What's the name?"

71

"Morgan," says she, "Mildred Morgan."

"Ah," says the boss, "very much obliged, Mil—er—Miss Morgan," and before I could get to the door he has hopped up and opened it for her.

Then he turns around and sees me standin' there grinnin'. "Torchy," says he, "are there any more like that around the shop?"

"None that I ever saw," says I.

"Thank Heaven!" says he. "Send in one of the other kind."

"Want a real ripe one?" says I.

He does. And say, we got plenty of them. I picks out one with washed-out eyes, front teeth that sticks out, and no shape to speak of. She could make the typewriter do a double shuffle, though, and there couldn't anybody around the place sling out words faster'n she could take 'em down on her pad, or any she couldn't spell right the first crack. The old man fixes it that she's to go over Mildred's work with an ink eraser before it comes to him.

If Mildred knew about it, she never let on. Nothin' much bothered her. She'd come sailin' in any old time durin' the forenoon, lookin' as han'some as a florist's window and actin' as if she never heard of such a thing as a time clock. Piddie tackles her only once.72

72

"Miss Morgan," says he, "business begins here at nine o'clock promptly."

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