Lewis had come to his office half an hour ahead of his usual time on Monday morning in order to prepare his secretary for Petra’s appearance there, which would be due, if she kept her word, a few minutes later.
“Certainly there are no loose ends. But that is just the trouble. You are so conscientious that you won’t let the sun go down—no, you won’t let it rise, and that is the point—on loose ends. You sit up nights over the work. I simply had to get you an assistant and this seemed the opportunity. By the way, and it’s very much by the way, did you do what I said and forget the manuscript over the week-end, or did you keep it right by you?”
Miss Frazier did not bother to answer. It was a foolish question. How could she have done what he wanted! His book was going to press in another month. At least, she and the publishers intended that it should. Naturally, she had worked on it over Saturday and Sunday, and she would continue to do that, if only Doctor Pryne kept his end up, until the thing was in print. But now she would not waste time in defending her industry, with this new girl due any minute.
“Who is she?” Miss Frazier asked. “Where did you find her?”
“It’s Petra Farwell. She needed a job so badly that I offered her this one without considering very much her qualifications.” He had to admit it. “She has no training but I believe she can typewrite a little. She has done some copying for her father. But whether she can spell or knows how to make out a check, or anything of the sort, I don’t know. I thought we’d put her in the reception office with the telephone and the patients. She has a nice clear voice and nice manners. That will relieve you of the part you like least. Isn’t it so?”
Petra Farwell! That was the girl, the daughter of the novelist Lowell Farwell, about whom they had been speaking here in the office only a few days ago. A young architect, a Mr. Richard Wilder, had made an appointment for the sole purpose of asking Doctor Pryne to psychoanalyze the novelist’s daughter, and he had taken fifteen minutes or more of Doctor Pryne’s time doing it. It was with some satisfaction Miss Frazier had already made a memorandum of the bill she was to send for that interview and obtained the doctor’s approval of it,—twenty-five dollars. Doctor Pryne had turned down the case, naturally, since he was not a psychoanalyst, and really, anyway, had time for only serious work; but Miss Frazier remembered that he had accepted an invitation to tea at the Farwell home in the country. And this was the result!
