“Urf!” gasped the victim of these maneuvers. He bent a look upon Darcy which was a curious blend of wonder, skepticism, and respect. “Say,” he said, “you couldn’t use a job in the trucking department, maybe?” Then, recovering himself, he growled: “What was that you said about thirty dollars?”
The growl had no effect. Darcy’s confidence had been stiffened by the little interlude of the chair.
“My prices have gone up,” she informed him.
“The devil they have! Beg y’ pardon, Miss Watchemame—”
“Miss Cole. Look-a-here, now; d’ you think your work is worth ten dollars more than it has been?”
“Put it this way; I think you’ve been paying me ten dollars too little. Don’t you?”
At bottom Mr. Riegel was a fair-minded as well as a shrewd person. Moreover, he had been tremendously impressed by the unsuspected physical prowess of this queer specimen. To catch him in mid-flight and reëstablish his equilibrium had required no mean quality of muscle. Yet this sloppy-looking girl had done it without turning a hair! And now she was striking him for a raise. He laughed aloud.
“That ain’t the point,” said he. “I don’t; but some of my competitors might. Lessay twenty-five for the next half-dozen: after that, thirty, and this one goes, as is.”
Exultant she went out into a dusk of wind and rain, such as would have swamped her spirit in misery aforetime, and fought her way joyously through it, ending her journey by taking the long flights of the apartment two steps at a time and singing as she sped. Outside the door she had noticed a taxi. In the front room she found Gloria, who had stopped on her way to the theater, stretched on the divan and talking with the turtledoves.
“I looked in to see how you were getting on,” said the actress, eyeing Darcy keenly.
“Everything all right in the gymnasium? Did Andy—er—”
“Oh, yes. It’s all right,” hastily broke in the girl, having no mind to hear her felonies discussed by her flat-mates. “Just as right as right can be.”
“You’re awfully chirpy, considering what a beast of a raw, rainy day it’s been,” observed Helen.
“Is it bad?” said Darcy blandly. “I suppose it is, but I hardly noticed.”
“Another British mail in, I suppose,” conjectured Maud. “That always brightens her up.”