The Lottery and Other Stories

Colloquy

THE DOCTOR was competent-looking and respectable. Mrs. Arnold felt vaguely comforted by his appearance, and her agitation lessened a little. She knew that he noticed her hand shaking when she leaned forward for him to light her cigarette, and she smiled apologetically, but he looked back at her seriously.

“You seem to be upset,” he said gravely.

“I’m very much upset,” Mrs. Arnold said. She tried to talk slowly and intelligently. “That’s one reason I came to you instead of going to Doctor Murphy—our regular doctor, that is.”

The doctor frowned slightly. “My husband,” Mrs. Arnold went on. “I don’t want him to know that I’m worried, and Doctor Murphy would probably feel it was necessary to tell him.” The doctor nodded, not committing himself, Mrs. Arnold noted.

“What seems to be the trouble?”

Mrs. Arnold took a deep breath. “Doctor,” she said, “how do people tell if they’re going crazy?”

The doctor looked up.

“Isn’t that silly,” Mrs. Arnold said. “I hadn’t meant to say it like that. It’s hard enough to explain anyway, without making it so dramatic.”

“Insanity is more complicated than you think,” the doctor said.

“I know it’s complicated,” Mrs. Arnold said. “That’s the only thing I’m really sure of. Insanity is one of the things I mean.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“That’s my trouble, Doctor.” Mrs. Arnold sat back and took her gloves out from under her pocketbook and put them carefully on top. Then she took them and put them underneath the pocketbook again.

“Suppose you just tell me all about it,” the doctor said.

Mrs. Arnold sighed. “Everyone else seems to understand,” she said, “and I don’t. Look.” She leaned forward and gestured with one hand while she spoke. “I don’t understand the way people live. It all used to be so simple. When I was a little girl I used to live in a world where a lot of other people lived too and they all lived together and things went along like that with no fuss.” She looked at the doctor. He was frowning again, and Mrs. Arnold went on, her voice rising slightly. “Look. Yesterday morning my husband stopped on his way to his office to buy a paper. He always buys the Times and he always buys it from the same dealer, and yesterday the dealer didn’t have a Times for my husband and last night when he came home for dinner he said the fish was burned and the dessert was too sweet and he sat around all evening talking to himself.”

“He could have tried to get it at another dealer,” the doctor said. “Very often dealers downtown have papers later than local dealers.”

“No,” Mrs. Arnold said, slowly and distinctly, “I guess I’d better start over. When I was a little girl—” she said. Then she stopped. “Look,” she said, “did there use to be words like psychosomatic medicine? Or international cartels? Or bureaucratic centralization?”

“Well,” the doctor began.

“What do they mean?” Mrs. Arnold insisted.

“In a period of international crisis,” the doctor said gently, “when you find, for instance, cultural patterns rapidly disintegrating…”

“International crisis,” Mrs. Arnold said. “Patterns.” She began to cry quietly. “He said the man had no right not to save him a Times,” she said hysterically, fumbling in her pocket for a handkerchief, “and he started talking about social planning on the local level and surtax net income and geopolitical concepts and deflationary inflation.” Mrs. Arnold’s voice rose to a wail. “He really said deflationary inflation.”

“Mrs. Arnold,” the doctor said, coming around the desk, “we’re not going to help things any this way.”

“What is going to help?” Mrs. Arnold said. “Is everyone really crazy but me?”

“Mrs. Arnold,” the doctor said severely, “I want you to get hold of yourself. In a disoriented world like ours today, alienation from reality frequently—”

“Disoriented,” Mrs. Arnold said. She stood up. “Alienation,” she said. “Reality.” Before the doctor could stop her she walked to the door and opened it. “Reality,” she said, and went out.

Elizabeth

JUST BEFORE the alarm went off she was lying in a hot sunny garden, with green lawns around her and stretching as far as she could see. The bell of the clock was an annoyance, a warning which had to be reckoned with; she moved uneasily in the hot sun and knew she was awake. When she opened her eyes and it was raining and she saw the white outline of the window against the grey sky, she tried to turn over and bury her face in the green grass, but it was morning and habit was lifting her up and dragging her away into the rainy dull day.

It was definitely past eight o’clock. The clock said so, the radiator was beginning to crackle, and on the street two stories below she could hear the ugly morning noises of people stirring, getting out to work. She put her feet reluctantly out from under the blankets and on to the floor, and swung herself up to sit on the edge of the bed. By the time she was standing up and in her bathrobe the day had fallen into its routine; after the first involuntary rebellion against every day’s alarm she subsided regularly into the shower, make-up, dress, breakfast schedule which would take her through the beginning of the day and out into the morning where she could forget the green grass and the hot sun and begin to look forward to dinner and the evening.

Because it was raining and the day seemed unimportant she put on the first things she came to; a grey tweed suit that she knew was shapeless and heavy on her now that she was so thin, a blue blouse that never felt comfortable. She knew her own face too well to enjoy the long careful scrutiny that went with putting on make-up; toward four o’clock in the afternoon her pale narrow cheeks would warm up and fill out, and the lipstick that looked too purple with her dark hair and eyes would take on a rosier touch in spite of the blue blouse, but this morning she thought, as she had thought nearly every morning standing in front of her mirror, I wish I’d been a blonde; never realizing quite that it was because there were thin hints of grey in her hair.

She walked quickly around her one-room apartment, with a sureness that came of habit rather than conviction; after more than four years in this one home she knew all its possibilities, how it could put on a sham appearance of warmth and welcome when she needed a place to hide in, how it stood over her in the night when she woke suddenly, how it could relax itself into a disagreeable unmade, badly-put-together state, mornings like this, anxious to drive her out and go back to sleep. The book she had read the night before lay face down on the end table, the ashtray next to it dirtied: the clothes she had taken off lay over the back of a chair, to be taken to the cleaner this morning.

With her coat and hat on, she made the bed quickly, pulling it straight on top over the wrinkles beneath, stuffed the clothes to go to the cleaner into the back of the closet, and thought, I’ll dust and straighten and maybe wash the bathroom tonight, come home and take a hot bath and wash my hair and do my nails; by the time she had locked the apartment door behind her and started down the stairs, she was thinking, Maybe today I’ll stop in and get some bright material for slip-covers and drapes. I could make them evenings and the place wouldn’t look so dreary when I wake up mornings; yellow, I could get some yellow dishes and put them along the wall in a row. Like in Mademoiselle or something, she told herself ironically as she stopped at the front door, the brisk young businesswoman and her one-room home. Suitable for entertaining brisk young businessmen. I wish I had something that folded up into a bookcase on one side and a Sheraton desk on the other and opened out into a dining-room table big enough to seat twelve.

While she was standing just inside the door, pulling on her gloves and hoping the rain might stop in these few seconds, the door next to the stairway opened and a woman said, “Who’s that?”

“It’s Miss Style,” she said, “Mrs. Anderson?”

The door opened wide and an old woman put her head out. “I thought it was that fellow has the apartment right over you,” she said. “I been meaning to catch him about leaving them skis outside his door. Nearly broke my leg.”

“I’ve been wishing I didn’t have to go out. It’s such a bad day.”

The old woman came out of her room and went to the front door. She pulled aside the door curtain and looked out, wrapping her arms around herself. She was wearing a dirty house dress and the sight of her made Miss Style’s grey tweed suit suddenly seem clean and warm.

“I been trying to catch that fellow for two days now,” the old woman said. “He goes in and out so quiet.” She giggled, looking sideways at Miss Style. “I nearly caught that man of yours night before last,” she said. “He comes down the stairs quiet, too. I saw who it was in time,” and she giggled again. “I guess all the men come downstairs quiet. All afraid of something.”

“Well, if I’m going to go out I might as well do it,” Miss Style said. She still stood in the doorway for a minute, hesitating before walking out into the day and the rain and the people. She lived on a fairly quiet street, where later there would be children shouting at each other and on a nice day an organ-grinder, but today in the rain everything looked dirty. She hated to wear rubbers because she had graceful slim feet; on a day like this she went slowly, stepping carefully between puddles.

It was very late; there were only a few people still sitting at the counter in the corner drugstore. She sat on a stool, reconciled to the time, and waited patiently until the clerk came down the counter with her orange juice. “Hello, Tommy,” she said dismally.

“Morning, Miss Style,” he said, “lousy day.”

“Isn’t it,” she said. “A fine day not to go out.”

“I came in this morning,” Tommy said. “I would have given my right arm to stay home in bed. There ought to be a law against rain.”

Tommy was little and ugly and alert; looking at him, Miss Style thought, He has to get up and come to work in the mornings just like I do and just like everyone else in the world; the rain is just another break in the millions of lousy things, in getting up and going to work.

“I don’t mind snow,” Tommy was saying, “and I don’t mind the hot weather, but I sure do hate rain.”

He turned suddenly when someone called him, and went dancing down to the other end of the counter, bringing up with a flourish before his customer. “Lousy day, isn’t it?” he said. “Sure do wish I was in Florida.”

Miss Style drank her orange juice, remembering her dream. A sharp recollection of flowers and warmth came into her mind, and then was lost before the cold driving rain outside.

Tommy came back with her coffee and a plate of toast “Nothing like coffee to cheer you up in the morning,” he said.

“Thanks, Tommy,” she said, unenthusiastic. “How’s your play coming, by the way?”

Tommy looked up eagerly. “Hey,” he said, “I finished it, I meant to tell you. Finished the whole thing and sent it away day before yesterday.”

Funny thing, she thought, a clerk in a drugstore, he gets up in the morning and eats and walks around and writes a play just like it was real, just like the rest of us, like me. “Fine,” she said.

“I sent it to an agent a guy told me about, he said it was the best agent he knew.”

“Tommy,” she said, “why didn’t you give it right to me?”

He laughed, looking down at the sugar bowl he was holding for her. “Listen,” he said, “my friend said you didn’t want stuff like mine, you want people, like, from out of town or something, they don’t know if they’re any good or not. Hell,” he went on anxiously, “I’m not one of these guys fall for ads in the magazines.”

“I see,” she said.

Tommy leaned over the counter. “Don’t get sore,” he said, “You know what I mean, you know your business better than I do.”

“I’m not sore,” she said. She watched Tommy hurry away again, and she thought—Wait till I tell Robbie. Wait till I tell him the soda jerk thinks he’s a bum.

“Listen,” Tommy said to her, from halfway down the counter, “how long do you think I ought to wait? How long will they take to read it, these agents?”

“Couple of weeks, maybe,” she said. “Maybe longer.”

“I figured it might be,” he said. “You want more coffee today?”

“No, thanks,” she said. She slid down from the stool and walked across the store to pay her check. They’re probably going to buy that play, she was thinking, and I’m going to start eating in the hamburg joint across the street.

She went out into the rain again to see her bus just pulling up across the street. She ran for it, against the light, and pushed into the crowd of people getting on. With a kind of fury left over from Tommy and his play she thrust her way against the people, and a woman turned to her and said, “Who do you think you’re pushing?” Vengefully she put her elbow into the woman’s ribs and got on the bus first. She dropped her nickel in and got to the last available seat, and heard the woman behind her. “These people who think they can shove anybody around, they think they’re important.” She looked around to see if anyone knew who the woman was talking about; the man beside her on the seat next to the window was staring straight ahead with the infinitely tired expression of the early-morning bus passenger; two girls in the seat in front were looking out the window after a man passing, and in the aisle next to her the woman was standing, still talking about her. “People who think their business is the only important thing in the world. Think they can just push anyone around.” No one in the bus was listening: everyone was wet and uncomfortable and crowded, but the woman went on monotonously—“Think no one else has a right to ride on buses.”

She stared past the man out the window until the crowds coming into the bus pushed the woman past her down the aisle. When she came to her stop she was timid for a minute about pushing her way out, and when she reached the door the woman was near it, staring at her as though wanting to remember her face. “Dried-up old maid,” the woman said loudly, and the people around her in the bus laughed.

Miss Style put on an expression of contempt, stepping carefully down to the curb, looking up just as the bus pulled away to see the woman’s face still watching her from the window. She walked through the rain to the old building where her office was, thinking, That woman was just waiting for anyone to cross her path this morning, I wish I’d said something back to her.

“Morning, Miss Style,” the elevator operator said.

“Morning,” she said. She walked into the open-work iron elevator and leaned against the back wall.

“Bad day,” the operator said. He waited for a minute and then closed the door. “Fine day not to go out,” he said.

“Sure is,” she said. I wish I’d said something to that woman in the bus, she was thinking. I shouldn’t have let her get away with it, let the day start off like that, with a nasty incident, I should have answered her back and got to feeling good and pleased with myself. Start the day off right.

“Here you are,” the operator said. “You don’t have to go out again for quite a while.”

“Glad of that,” she said. She got out of the elevator and walked down the hall to her office. There was a light on inside, making the ROBERT SHAX, Literary Agents, stand out against the door. Looks almost cheerful, she thought, Robbie must be in early.

She had worked for Robert Shax for nearly eleven years. When she came to New York the Christmas she was twenty, a thin dark girl with neat clothes and hair and moderate ambition, holding on to her pocketbook with both hands, afraid of subways, she answered an ad, and met Robert Shax before she had even found a room to live in. It had been one of those windfall ads, an assistant wanted in a literary agency, and there was no one around to tell Elizabeth Style, asking people timidly how to find the address, that if she got the job it wasn’t worth getting. The literary agency was Robert Shax and a thin clever man who had disliked Elizabeth so violently that after two years she had taken Robert Shax away to start his own agency. Robert Shax was on the door and on all the checks, and Elizabeth Style hid away in her office, wrote the letters, kept the records, and came out occasionally to consult the files she allowed Robert Shax to keep on display.

They had spent much time in the eight years trying to make this office look like a severe environment for a flourishing business: a miserable place that its owners were too busy to pretty up more than enough to meet the purposes of its clients. The door opened into a tight little reception room, painted tan the year before, with two cheap chrome and brown chairs, a brown linoleum floor, and a framed picture of a vase of flowers over the small desk which was occupied five afternoons a week by a Miss Wilson, a colorless girl who answered the phone sniffling. Beyond Miss Wilson’s desk were two doors, which did not give the effect of limitless offices, stretching on down the building, that Robert Shax had hoped they might; the one on the left had, on the door, “Robert Shax,” and the one on the right had, on the door, “Elizabeth Style,” and through the pebbled glass doors you could see, dimly, the shape of the narrow window each office owned, crowding close enough to the door and walls to admit that the two offices together were no wider than the reception room, and to hint darkly that all that protected the privacy of Mr. Shax and Miss Style was a beaverboard partition painted to look like the walls.

Every morning Elizabeth Style came into the office with the idea that something might be done for it still, that somehow there might be a way to make it look respectable, with Venetian blinds or paneling or an efficient-looking bookcase with sets of classics and the newest books that Robert Shax had presumably sold to their publishers. Or even an end table with expensive magazines. Miss Wilson thought it would be nice to have a radio, but Robert Shax wanted an expensive office with heavy carpeting and desks sitting solidly on the floor and a battery of secretaries.

This morning the office looked more cheerful than usual, probably because it was still raining outside, or else because the lights were already on and the radiators were going. Elizabeth Style went over to the door of her office and opened it, saying, “Morning, Robbie,” because, since there was no one in the office, there was no need to pretend that the beaverboard partitions were walls.

“Morning, Liz,” Robbie said, and then, “Come on in, will you?”

“I’ll take my coat off,” she said. There was a tiny closet in the corner of her office where she hung up her coat, squeezing in back of the desk to do it. She noticed that there was mail on her desk, four or five letters and a bulky envelope that would be a manuscript. She spread the letters out to make sure there was nothing of any particular interest, and then went out of her office and opened the door of Robbie’s.

He was leaning down over his desk, in an attitude meant to show extreme concentration; the faintly bald top of his head was toward her and his heavy round shoulders cut off the lower half of the window. His office was almost exactly like hers; it had a small filing cabinet and an autographed photograph of one of the few reasonably successful writers the firm had handled. The photograph was signed “To Bob, with deepest gratitude, Jim,” and Robert Shax was fond of using it as a happy example in his office conversations with eager authors. When she had closed the door Elizabeth was only a step away from the straight visitor’s chair slanting at the desk; she sat down and stretched her feet out in front of her.

“I got soaked coming in this morning,” she said.

“It’s an awful day,” Robbie said, without looking up. When he was alone with her he relaxed the heartiness that he usually stocked in his voice: he let his face look tired and worried. He was wearing his good grey suit that day, and later, with other people around, he would look like a golfer, a man who ate good rare roast beef and liked pretty girls. “It’s one hell of a day,” he repeated. He looked up at her. “Liz,” he said, “that goddamned minister is in town again.”

“No wonder you look so worried,” she said. She had been ready to complain at him, to tell him about the woman on the bus, to ask him to sit up straight and behave, but there was nothing to say. “Poor old Robbie,” she said.

“There’s a note from him,” Robbie said. “I’ve got to go up there this morning. He’s in that goddamned rooming-house again.”

“What are you planning to tell him?”

Robbie got up and turned around to the window. When he got out of his chair he had just room to turn around to get to the window of the closet or the filing cabinet; on a pleasanter day she might have an amiable remark about his weight. “I don’t know what in hell I’m planning to tell him,” Robbie said. “I’ll promise him something.”

I know you will, she thought. She had the familiar picture of Robbie’s maneuvers to escape an awkward situation in the back of her mind: she could see Robbie shaking the old man’s hand briskly, calling him “sir” and keeping his shoulders back, saying that the old man’s poems were “fine, sir, really magnificent,” promising anything, wildly, just to get away. “You’ll come back in some kind of trouble,” she said mildly.

Robbie laughed suddenly, happily. “But he won’t bother us for a while.”

“You ought to call him up or something. Write him a letter,” she said.

“Why?” She could see that he was pleased with the idea of coming back in trouble, of being irresponsible and what he would call carefree; he would make the long trip uptown to the minister’s rooming-house by subway and take a taxi for the last two blocks to arrive in style, and sit for a tiresome hour talking to the old man, just to be carefree and what he might call gallant.

Make him feel good, she thought. He has to go, not me. “You shouldn’t be trusted to run a business by yourself,” she said. “You’re too silly.”

He laughed again and walked around the desk to pat her head. “We get along pretty well, don’t we, Liz?”

“Fine,” she said.

He was beginning to think about it now; he was holding his head up and his voice was filling out. “I’ll tell him someone wants one of his poems for an anthology,” he said.

“Just don’t give him any money,” she said. “He has more than we have now.”

He went back to his closet and took out his coat, his good coat today, and threw it carelessly over his arm. He put his hat on the back of his head and picked up his brief case from the desk. “Got all the old guy’s poems in here,” he said. “I figured I could kill some time reading them aloud to him.”

“Have a nice trip,” she said.

He patted her on the head again, and then reached out for the door. “You’ll take care of everything here?”

“I’ll try to cope with it,” she said.

She followed him out the door and started into her own office. Halfway across the outer office he stopped, not turning. “Liz?” he said.

“Well?”

He thought for a minute. “Seems like there was something I wanted to tell you,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“See you for lunch?” she asked.

“I’ll be back about twelve-thirty,” he said.

He closed the door and she heard his footsteps going emphatically down the hall to the elevator; busy footsteps, she thought, in case anyone was listening in this fearful old building.

She sat for a minute at her desk, smoking and wishing she could paint her office walls a light green. If she wanted to stay late at night she could do it herself. It would only take one can of paint, she told herself bitterly, to do an office like this, with enough left over to do the front of the building. Then she put out her cigarette and thought, I’ve worked in it this long, maybe some day we’ll get a million-dollar client and can move into a real office building where they have soundproof walls.

The mail on her desk was bad. A bill from her dentist, a letter from a client in Oregon, a couple of ads, a letter from her father, and the bulky envelope that was certainly a manuscript. She threw out the ads and the dentist’s bill, which was marked “Please remit,” set the manuscript and the other letter aside, and opened the letter from her father.

It was in his own peculiar style, beginning, “Dearest Daughter,” and ending, “Yr. Afft. Father,” and told her that the feed store was doing badly, that her sister in California was pregnant again, that old Mrs. Gill had asked after her the other day, and that he found himself very much alone since her mother’s death. And he hoped she was well. She threw the letter into the wastebasket on top of the dentist’s bill.

The letter from the client in Oregon wanted to know what had happened to a manuscript sent in three months before; the large bulky envelope contained a manuscript written in longhand, from a young man in Allentown who wanted it sold immediately and their fee taken out of the editor’s check. She glanced through the manuscript carelessly, turning over the pages and reading a few words on each; halfway through she stopped and read a whole page, and then turned back a little and read more. With her eyes still on the manuscript, she leaned over and reached into the bottom drawer of her desk, stirring papers around until she found a small, ten-cent notebook, partly filled with notes. She opened the notebook to a blank page, copied out a paragraph from the manuscript, thinking, I can switch that around and make it a woman instead of a man; and she made another note, “make W., use any name but Helen,” which was the name of the woman in the story. Then she put the notebook away and set the manuscript to one side of her desk in order to swing up the panel of the desk that brought the typewriter upright. She took out a sheet of notepaper labeled “ROBERT SHAX, Literary Agents, Elizabeth Style, Fiction Department,” and put it into the typewriter; she was just typing the young man’s name and the address: General Delivery, Allentown, when she heard the outer door open and close.

“Hello,” she called, without looking up.

“Good morning.”

She looked up then; it was such a high, girlish voice. The girl who had come in was big and blonde, and walked across the little reception room as though she were prepared to be impressed no matter what happened to her there.

“Did you want to see me?” Elizabeth asked, her hands still resting on the typewriter keys. If God should have sent me a client, she thought, it won’t hurt to look literary.

“I wanted Mr. Shax,” the girl said. She waited in the doorway of Elizabeth’s office.

“He was called out on very pressing business,” Elizabeth said. “Did you have an appointment?”

The girl hesitated, as though doubting Elizabeth’s authority. “Not exactly,” she said finally. “I’m supposed to be working here, I guess.”

Seemed like there was something he wanted to tell me, Elizabeth thought, that coward. “I see,” she said. “Come in and sit down.”

The girl came in shyly, although with no apparent timidity. She figured it was his business to tell me, not hers, Elizabeth thought. “Did Mr. Shax tell you to come to work here?”

“Well,” the girl said, deciding it was all right to trust Elizabeth, “on Monday about five o’clock I was asking for a job in all the offices in this building and I came here and Mr. Shax showed me around the office and he said he thought I could do the work all right.” She thought back over what she had said. “You weren’t here,” she added.

“I couldn’t have been,” Elizabeth agreed. He’s known since Monday and I find out, she thought, what is this, Wednesday? I find out on Wednesday when she shows up for work. “I didn’t ask your name.”

“Daphne Hill,” the girl said meekly.

Elizabeth wrote “Daphne Hill” down on her memorandum and looked at it, partly to seem as if she was coming to an important decision and partly to see what “Daphne Hill” looked like written down.

“Mr. Shax said,” the girl began, and stopped. Her voice was high and when she was anxious she opened her small brown eyes wide and blinked. Except for her hair, which was a pale blonde and curled all over the top of her head, she was clumsy and awkward, all dressed up for her first day at work.

“What did Mr. Shax say?” Elizabeth asked when the girl seemed to have subsided permanently.

“He said he wasn’t satisfied with the girl he had now and I was to learn her job and get to do it and I was to come today because he was going to tell her yesterday that I was coming.”

“Fine,” Elizabeth said. “Can you type, do you suppose?”

“I guess so,” the girl said.

Elizabeth looked at the letter in the typewriter on her desk and then said, “Well, you go on outside and sit at the desk out there and if the phone rings you answer it. Read or something.”

“Yes, Miss Style,” the girl said.

“And please close my office door,” Elizabeth said. She watched the girl go out and close the door carefully. The things she had wanted to say to the girl were waiting to be said: maybe she could rephrase some of them for Robbie at lunch.

What does this mean, she thought suddenly in panic, Miss Wilson has been here almost as long as I have. Is he trying in his own heavy-handed fashion to beautify the office? He might better buy a bookcase; who is going to teach this incredible girl to answer the phone and write letters, even as well as Miss Wilson? Me, she thought at last. I’m going to have to drag Robbie out of this last beautiful impulsive gesture like always; the things I do for a miserable little office and a chance to make money. Anyway, maybe Daphne will help me paint the walls after five some day; maybe the one thing Daphne knows how to do is paint.

She turned back to the letter in the typewriter. An encouraging letter to a new client; it fell into a simple formula in her mind and she wrote it without hesitating, typing clumsily and amateurishly, but quickly. “Dear Mr. Burton,” she wrote. “We have read your story with a good deal of interest. Your plot is well thought out, and we believe that the character of—” She stopped for a minute and turned back to the manuscript, opening it at random—“Lady Montague, in particular, is of more than usual merit. Naturally, in order to appeal to the better-paying markets, the story needs touching up by a skilled professional editor, a decisive selling service we are able to offer our clients. Our rates—”

“Miss Style?”

In spite of the beaverboard partitions, Elizabeth said, “If you want to talk to me, Miss Hill, come in.”

After a minute Miss Hill opened the door and came in. Elizabeth could see her pocketbook on the desk outside, the lipstick and compact sitting next to it. “When does Mr. Shax get back?”

“Probably not till this afternoon. He went out on important business with a client,” Elizabeth said. “Why, did anyone call?”

“No, I just wondered,” Miss Hill said. She closed the door and went heavily back to her desk. Elizabeth looked again at the letter in the typewriter and then turned her chair around to put her still-wet feet on the radiator under the window. After a minute she opened the bottom drawer of her desk again and this time took out a pocket reprint of a mystery story. With her feet on the radiator she settled down to read.

Because it was raining, and because she was depressed and out of sorts, and because Robbie had not come by quarter to one, Elizabeth treated herself to a Martini while she was waiting, sitting uncomfortably on a narrow chair in the restaurant, watching other unimpressive people go in and out. The restaurant was crowded, the floors wet from the feet coming in from the rain, and it was dark and dismal. Elizabeth and Robbie had come here for lunch two or three times a week, ever since they had opened the office in the building near-by. The first day they had come had been in summer, and Elizabeth, in a sheer black dress—she remembered it still; she would be too thin for it now—and a small white hat and white gloves, had been excited and happy over the great new career opening out for her. She and Robbie had held hands across the table and talked enthusiastically: they were only going to stay in the old building for a year, or two at the most, and then they would have enough money to move uptown; the good clients who would come to the new Robert Shax Agency would be honest reputable writers, with large best-selling manuscripts; editors would go to lunch with them at sleek uptown restaurants, a drink before lunch would not be an extraordinary thing. The first order of stationery saying “ROBERT SHAX, Literary Agents, Elizabeth Style, Fiction Department,” had not been delivered; they planned the letterhead at lunch that day.

Elizabeth thought about ordering another Martini and then she saw Robbie coming impatiently through the people in the aisles. He saw her across the room and waved at her, aware of people watching him, an executive late for a luncheon appointment, even in a dingy restaurant.

When he got to the table, his back to the room, his face was tired and his voice was quiet. “Finally made it,” he said. He looked surprised at the empty Martini glass. “I haven’t even had breakfast yet,” he said.

“Did you have a bad time with the minister?”

“Terrible,” he said. “He wants a book of his poems published this year.”

“What did you tell him?” Elizabeth tried not to let her voice sound strained. Time enough for that later, she thought, when he feels like answering me.

“I don’t know,” Robbie said. “How the hell do I know what I told the old fool?” He sat down heavily. “Something about we’d do our best.”

That means he’s really made a mess of it, Elizabeth thought. If he did well he’d tell me in detail. She was suddenly so tired that she let her shoulders droop and sat stupidly staring off at the people coming in and out of the door. What am I going to say to him, she thought, what words will Robbie understand best?

“What are you looking so glum about?” Robbie asked suddenly. “No one made you go way the hell uptown without breakfast.”

“I had a tough morning anyway,” Elizabeth said. Robbie looked up, waiting. “I had a new employee to break in.”

Robbie still waited, his face a little flushed, squinting at her; he was waiting to see what she was going to say before he apologized, or lost his temper, or tried to pass the whole thing off as a fine joke.

Elizabeth watched him: this is Robbie, she was thinking, I know what he’s going to do and what he’s going to say and what tie he’s going to wear every day in the week, and for eleven years I have known these things and for eleven years I have been wondering how to say things to make him understand; and eleven years ago we sat here and held hands and he said we were going to be successful. “I was thinking of the day we had lunch here when we first started out together,” she said quietly, and Robbie looked mystified. “The day we started out together,” she repeated more distinctly. “Do you remember Jim Harris?” Robbie nodded, his mouth a little open. “We were going to make a lot of money because Jim was going to bring all his friends to us and then you had a fight with Jim and we haven’t seen him since and none of his friends came to us and now we’ve got your friend the minister for a client and a beautiful picture of Jim on your office wall. Signed,” she said. “Signed, with ‘gratitude,’ and if he was making enough money we’d be around trying to borrow from him even now.”

“Elizabeth,” Robbie said. He was confused between trying to look hurt and trying to see if anyone heard what she was saying.

“Even the boy in my corner drugstore.” Elizabeth looked at him for a minute. “Daphne Hill,” she said. “My God.”

“I see,” Robbie said, with a significant smile. “Daphne Hill.” He turned when he saw the waitress coming. “Miss,” he said loudly, and to Elizabeth, “I think you ought to have another drink. Cheer you up a little.” When the waitress looked at him he said “Two Martinis,” and turned back to Elizabeth, putting on the smile again. “I’m going to drink my breakfast,” he said, and then he reached over and touched Elizabeth’s hand. “Listen,” he said, “Liz, if that’s all that’s bothering you. I was a dope, I thought you’d figured I’d done something wrong about the minister. Listen, Daphne’s all right. I just thought we needed someone around who’d brighten the place up a little.”

“You could have painted the wall,” Elizabeth said tonelessly. When Robbie stared she said, “Nothing,” and he went on, leaning forward seriously.

“Look,” he said, “if you don’t like this Daphne out she goes. There’s no question about it, after all. We’re in business together.” He looked off into space and smiled reminiscently. “I remember those days, all right. We were going to do wonders.” He lowered his voice and looked lovingly at Elizabeth. “I think we still can,” he said.

Elizabeth laughed in spite of herself. “You’ll have to go down the stairs more quietly,” she said. “My janitor’s wife thought you were the man who leaves skis out in the hall. She nearly broke a leg.”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Robbie said. “Elizabeth, it really hurts me to see you let someone like Daphne Hill upset you.”

“Of course it does,” Elizabeth said. Robbie suddenly impressed her as funny. If only I could keep on feeling like this, she thought, even while she was laughing at him. “Here comes your breakfast for you to drink,” she said.

“Miss,” Robbie said to the waitress. “We’d like to order our lunch, please.”

He handed the menu ceremoniously to Elizabeth and said to the waitress, “Chicken croquettes and French fried potatoes.” Elizabeth said, “The same, please,” and handed the menu back. When the waitress had gone Robbie picked up one of the Martinis and handed it to Elizabeth. “You need this, old girl,” he said. He picked up the other and looked at her; then he lowered his voice to the same low affectionate tone, and said, “Here’s to you, and our future success.”

Elizabeth smiled at him sweetly and tasted her drink. She could see Robbie debating whether to toss his off all at once or to sip it slowly as though he didn’t need it.

“If you drink it too fast you’ll be sick, dear,” she said. “Without your breakfast.”

He tasted it delicately and then set it down. “Now let’s talk seriously about Daphne,” he said.

“I thought she was leaving,” Elizabeth said.

He looked frightened. “Naturally, if you want it that way,” he said stiffly. “Seems sort of rotten to hire a girl and fire her the same day because you’re jealous.”

“I’m not jealous,” Elizabeth said. “I never said I was.”

“If I can’t have a good-looking girl in the office,” Robbie said.

“You can,” Elizabeth said. “I’d just like one who could type.”

“Daphne can take care of the work all right.”

“Robbie,” Elizabeth said, and then stopped. Already, she thought, I don’t want to laugh at him any more; I wish I could feel all the time like I did a minute ago, not like this. She looked at him carefully, his red face and the thin greying hair, and the heavy shoulders above the table; he was holding his head back and his chin firm because he knew she was looking at him. He thinks I’m awed, she thought, he’s a man and he’s cowed me. “Let her stay,” Elizabeth said.

“After all,” Robbie leaned back to let the waitress put his plate in front of him, “after all,” he went on when the waitress had gone, “it isn’t as though I didn’t have the authority to hire someone for my own office.”

“I know,” Elizabeth said wearily.

“If you want to start a fuss about some small thing,” Robbie said. The corners of his mouth were turned down and he refused to meet her eyes. “I can run my own office,” he repeated.

“You’re scared to death I might leave you some day,” Elizabeth said. “Eat your lunch.”

Robbie picked up his fork. “Naturally,” he said, “I feel that it would be a shame to break up a pleasant partnership just because you were jealous.”

“Never mind,” Elizabeth said, “I won’t go away anywhere.”

“I hope not,” Robbie said. He ate industriously for a minute. “I tell you what,” he said suddenly, putting his fork down, “we’ll try her out for a week and then if you don’t think she’s better than Miss Wilson she’ll go.”

“But I don’t—” Elizabeth began. Then she said. “Fine. That way we can find out exactly how she’ll suit us.”

“Splendid idea,” Robbie said. “Now I feel better.” He reached across the table and this time patted her hand. “Good old Liz,” he said.

“You know,” Elizabeth said, “I feel so funny right now.” She was looking at the doorway. “I thought I saw someone I knew.”

Robbie turned around and looked at the doorway. “Who?”

“No one you know,” Elizabeth said. “A boy from my home town. It wasn’t the same person, though.”

“Always think you see people you know in New York,” Robbie said, turning back to his fork.

Elizabeth was thinking, it must have been talking about old times with Robbie and the two drinks I had, I haven’t thought of Frank for years. She laughed out loud, and Robbie stopped eating to say, “What’s the matter with you, anyway? People will think something’s wrong.”

“I was just thinking,” Elizabeth said. Suddenly she felt that she must talk to Robbie, treat him as she would anyone else she knew well, like a husband almost. “I haven’t thought about this fellow for years,” she said. “It just brought a thousand things back to my mind.”

“An old boy friend?” Robbie said without interest.

Elizabeth felt the same twinge of horror she might have felt fifteen years ago at the suggestion, “Oh, no,” she said. “He took me to a dance once. My mother called up his mother and asked to have him take me.”

“Chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce,” Robbie said to the waitress.

“Just coffee,” Elizabeth said. “He was a wonderful boy,” she said to Robbie. Why can’t I stop myself? she was thinking, I haven’t thought about this for years.

“Listen,” Robbie said, “did you tell Daphne she could go out for lunch?”

“I didn’t tell her anything,” Elizabeth said.

“We better hurry then,” Robbie said. “The poor kid must be starving.”

Frank, Elizabeth thought. “Seriously,” she said, “what did you and the minister decide?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Robbie said, “when I get my ideas straight. Right now I’m not so sure what we did decide.”

And he’ll spring it on me suddenly, Elizabeth thought, so I won’t have time to think; he’s just promised to publish the minister’s poems at his own expense; or he’s gone out of town, will I deal with it; or someone’s going to sue us. Frank wouldn’t have been in a place like this, anyway, if he’s eating at all, it’s some place where everything is quiet and they call him “sir” and the women are all beautiful. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” she said.

“Of course it doesn’t,” Robbie said. He evidently felt it was necessary to add one final clinching touch before they went back to Daphne Hill. “As long as we can fight it together, we’ll come through everything fine,” he said. “We work well together, Liz.” He stood up and turned to get his coat and hat. His suit was wrinkled and he felt uncomfortable in it, from the way he moved his shoulders uneasily.

Elizabeth finished the last of her coffee. “You get fatter every day,” she said.

He looked around at her, his eyes frightened. “You think I ought to start dieting again?” he asked.

They came up in the elevator together, standing in opposite corners, each looking off into space, through the iron grillwork of the elevator, into something private and secret. They had gone up and down in this elevator four or six or eight or ten times a day since they moved into the building, sometimes happily, sometimes coldly angry with one another, sometimes laughing or quarreling furiously with quick violent phrases; the elevator operator probably knew more about them than Elizabeth’s landlady or the young couple who had the apartment across the hall from Robbie, and yet they got into the elevator daily and the elevator operator spoke to them civilly and stood with his back to them, riding up and down, entering briefly into their quarrels, possibly smiling with his back turned.

Today he said, “Weather still bad?” and Robbie said, “Worse than ever,” and the operator said, “There ought to be a law against it,” and let them off at their floor.

“I wonder what he thinks of us, the elevator man,” Elizabeth said, following Robbie down the hall.

“Probably wishes he could get off that elevator for a while and sit down in an office,” Robbie said. He opened the door of the office and said, “Miss Hill?”

Daphne Hill was sitting at the reception desk, reading the mystery Elizabeth had left to go out to lunch. “Hello, Mr. Shax,” she said.

“Did you take that off my desk?” Elizabeth said, surprised for a minute into speaking at once without thinking.

“Wasn’t it all right?” Daphne asked. “I didn’t have anything to do.”

“We’ll find you plenty to do, young lady,” Robbie said heartily, the brisk businessman again. “Sorry to keep you waiting for lunch.”

“I went out and got something to eat,” Daphne said.

“Good,” Robbie said, looking sideways at Elizabeth. “We’ll have to make some arrangement for the future.”

“Hereafter,” Elizabeth said sharply, “don’t go into my office without permission.”

“Sure,” Daphne said, startled. “You want your book back?”

“Keep it,” Elizabeth said. She went into her office and closed the door. She heard Robbie saying, “Miss Style doesn’t like to have her things disturbed, Miss Hill,” and then, “Come into my office, please.” As though there were real partitions, Elizabeth thought. She heard Robbie go quickly into his office and Daphne pound her deliberate way after him, and the door close.

She sighed, and thought, I’ll pretend they’re real partitions; Robbie will. She noticed a note standing against her typewriter where she had left it with the letter to Mr. Burton still half-finished. She picked up the note and read it with heavy concentration to drown out Robbie’s employer voice on the other side of the partition. The note was from Miss Wilson, and said:

“Miss Style, no one told me there was a new girl coming and since I’ve been working here so long I think you should have told me. I guess she can learn the work as well by herself. Please tell Mr. Shax to send me my money at home, the address is in the file as he knows. There was a call from a Mr. Robert Hunt for you, will you call him back at his hotel, the Addison House. Please tell Mr. Shax to send the money, it comes now to two weeks and an extra week for notice. Alice Wilson.”

She must have been mad, Elizabeth thought, not to wait around for her money, she must have been furious, I guess Daphne was the first to tell her and she felt like I did; he’ll never send her any money. She could hear Robbie’s voice saying, “It’s a terrible business, the most heart-breaking I know.” He’s talking about free-lance writing, she thought, Daphne probably wants to sell her life history.

She went out of the door of her office and around to Robbie’s and knocked. If Robbie says, “Who is it?” she thought, I’ll say “The elevator man, come up to sit down for a while.” Then Robbie said, “Come on in, Liz, don’t be silly.”

“Robbie,” she said, opening the door, “Miss Wilson was here and left a note.”

“I forgot to tell you,” Daphne said, “and I didn’t get a chance yet anyway. She said to tell Mr. Shax to send her money.”

“I’m sorry about this,” Robbie said. “She should have been told yesterday. It’s a damned shame for her to find out like this.” Daphne was sitting in the one other chair in his office and he hesitated and then said, “Sit here, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth waited until he started to hoist himself up and then said, “That’s all right, Robbie, I’m going back to work.”

Robbie read Miss Wilson’s letter carefully. “Miss Hill,” he said, “make a note to send Miss Wilson her back pay and the extra week she asks for.”

“I don’t have anything to make a note on,” Daphne said. Elizabeth took a pad and pencil off Robbie’s desk and handed it to her, and Daphne made a solemn sentence on the first page of the pad.

“Who is this Hunt?” Robbie asked Elizabeth. “Your old boy friend?”

I know I shouldn’t have told him, Elizabeth thought. “I think it’s an old friend of my father’s from home,” she said.

“Better call him back,” Robbie said, handing her the note.

“I shall,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t you think you’d better write Miss Wilson and explain what happened?”

Robbie looked dismayed, and then he said, “Miss Hill can do that this afternoon.”

Elizabeth, carefully not looking at Daphne, said, “Fine idea. That will give her something to do.”

She closed the door quietly when she went out and closed the door of her own office after herself to give the illusion of privacy. She knew that Robbie would listen to her talking on the phone; she had an odd picture of Robbie and Daphne, sitting silently one on either side of Robbie’s desk, two heavy serious faces turned slightly to the partition, listening soberly to Elizabeth talking to her father’s old friend.

She looked up the hotel number in the book, hearing Robbie say, “Tell her we’re all sincerely sorry, but that circumstances beyond my control, and so on. Make it as pleasant as possible. Remember to tell her we’ll consider her for the first new job we have here.”

Elizabeth dialed the number, waiting for the sudden silence in Robbie’s office. She asked the hotel clerk for Mr. Robert Hunt, and when he answered she made her voice low, and said, “Uncle Robert? This is Beth.”

He answered enthusiastically, “Beth! It’s fine hearing your voice. Mom thought you’d be too busy to call back.”

“Is she with you? How nice,” Elizabeth said. “How are you both? How is Dad?”

“All fine,” he said. “How are you, Beth?”

She kept her voice low. “Just grand, Uncle Robert, getting along so well. How long have you been here? And how long are you staying? And when can I see you?”

He laughed. “Mom is talking at me from this end and you’re talking at me from that end,” he said. “And I can’t hear a word either of you is saying. How are you, anyway?”

“I’m grand,” she said again.

“Beth,” he said, “we’re very anxious to see you. Got a lot of messages from home and all.”

“I’m pretty busy,” she said, “but I’d love to see you. How long are you staying?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “Just came in for a couple of days.”

She was figuring quickly, even while her voice was saying, “Oh, no,” with heavy dismay. “Why didn’t you let me know?” she said.

“Mom wants me to tell you everyone sends their love,” he said.

“I’m just sick,” she said. Guilt drove her into accenting her words violently. “I don’t know how I’m going to get to see you. Maybe tomorrow morning somehow?”

“Well,” he said slowly, “Mom sort of had her heart set on going to Long Island tomorrow to see her sister, and they’ll take us right to the train. We thought maybe you’d come along with us tonight.”

“Oh, Lord,” Elizabeth said, “I’ve got a dinner appointment I can’t break. A client,” she said, “you know.”

“Isn’t that a shame,” he said. “We’re going to a show; thought you might come along. Mom,” he called, “what’s that show we’re going to?” He waited for a minute and then said, “She doesn’t remember either. The hotel got tickets for us.”

“I wish I could,” she said, “I just wish I could.” She thought in spite of herself of the extra ticket they had been careful to buy, the two old people alone for dinner pretending they were celebrating in a strange city. They saved tonight for me, she thought. “If it had been any other person in the world, I could have broken it, but this is one of our best clients and I just don’t dare.”

“Of course not.” There was so long a silence that Elizabeth said hastily, “How is Dad, anyway?”

“Fine,” he said. “Everyone’s fine. I guess he sort of wishes you were home now.”

“I imagine he’s lonesome,” Elizabeth said, careful not to let her voice commit her to anything. She was anxious to end the phone call, dissociate herself from the Hunts and her father and the nagging hints that she should go home. I live in New York now, she told herself while the old man’s voice continued with a monotonous series of anecdotes about her father and people she had known long ago; I live in New York by myself and I don’t have to remember any of these people; Uncle Robert should be glad I talk to him at all.

“I’m so glad you called,” she said suddenly, through his voice. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Of course,” he said apologetically. “Well, Beth, write to all of us, won’t you? Mom is telling me to give you her love.”

They hang on to me, she thought; they’re holding me back, with their letters and their “Yrs. afftly.,” and their sending, love back and forth. “Good-bye,” she said.

“Come back soon for a visit,” he went on.

“I will when I can. Good-bye,” Elizabeth said. She hung up on his “Good-bye,” and then, “Oh, wait, Beth,” when something more occurred to him. I couldn’t listen any longer without being rude, she thought.

She heard Robbie’s voice starting then in the next office, “And I guess you understand about things like answering the phone, and so on.”

“I guess so,” Daphne said.

Elizabeth went back to her letter to Mr. Burton, permanently curled from staying in the typewriter, and she heard Robbie and Daphne Hill talking for a while, about names of clients, and the two-button phone extension at the reception desk, and then she heard both of them go out to the reception desk and try the extension, two children, she thought, playing office. Occasionally she would hear Robbie’s heavy laugh, and then, after a minute, Daphne laughing too, slow and surprised. In spite of all her attempts to concentrate on their rates for Mr. Burton she found herself listening, following Robbie and Daphne where they moved around the office. Once, louder than the slight murmur which had been going on between them, she heard Robbie’s man-of-the-world voice saying, “Some quiet little restaurant,” and then when the voice dropped back to its cautious tone she said to herself, Where they can talk. She waited, not to sound like an intruder, until she heard Daphne settle down solidly at the reception desk and Robbie start back for his own office. Then she said, “Robbie?”

There was a silence and then he came around and opened her office door. “You know I don’t like you to yell in the office,” he said.

She paused for a minute because she wanted to speak cordially. “We’re going to have dinner together tonight?” she asked. They had dinner together four or five times a week, usually in the restaurant where they had had lunch, or in some small place near either Robbie’s apartment or Elizabeth’s. When she saw the corners of Robbie’s mouth turn down and the faint turn of his head toward the outer office she raised her voice slightly. “I got out of seeing these fool people tonight,” she said. “There’s a lot I want to talk to you about.”

“As a matter of fact, Liz,” Robbie said, talking very quickly and in a low voice, “I’m afraid I’m going to be stuck for dinner.” Not realizing that he was repeating what he had heard her say on the phone a few minutes before, he went on, putting on a look of annoyance, “I’ve got a dinner appointment I can’t break, with a client.” When Elizabeth looked surprised, he said, “The minister, I promised him this morning we’d get together again tonight. I haven’t had a chance to tell you.”

“Of course you can’t break it,” Elizabeth said easily. She waited, watching Robbie. He was sitting uneasily on the corner of her desk, playing absently with a pencil, wanting to leave and afraid to go too abruptly. What am I doing, Elizabeth thought suddenly, playing hide-and-seek? “Why don’t you go to a movie or something?” she said.

Robbie laughed mournfully. “I wish I could,” he said.

Elizabeth reached over and took the pencil away from him. “Poor old Robbie,” she said. “You’re all upset. You ought to get off somewhere and relax.”

Robbie frowned anxiously. “Why should I?” he said. “Isn’t this my office?”

Elizabeth made her voice tender. “You ought to get out of here for a few hours, Robbie, I’m serious. You won’t be able to work this afternoon.” She decided to allow herself one small spiteful dig. “Particularly if you have to see that old horror tonight,” she said.

Robbie’s mouth opened and closed, and then he said, “I can’t think when it’s such lousy weather. Rain drives me crazy.”

“I know it does,” Elizabeth said. She stood up. “You get your hat and coat on, and leave your brief case and everything here,” she said, pushing him toward the door, “and then come back after sitting in a movie for a couple of hours and you’ll feel like a million dollars to go out and out-talk the minister.”

“I don’t want to go out again in this weather,” Robbie said.

“Stop and get a shave,” Elizabeth said. She opened the door of her office and saw Daphne Hill staring at her. “Get a haircut,” she said, touching the back of his head. “Miss Hill and I will get along fine without you. Won’t we, Miss Hill?”

“Sure,” Daphne said.

Robbie went uneasily into his office and came out a minute later carrying his wet coat and hat. “I don’t know what you want me to go out for,” he said.

“I don’t know what you want to stay here for,” Elizabeth said, escorting him to the outer door. “You’re not good for anything when you feel like this.” She opened the front door and he walked out. “See you later.”

“See you later,” Robbie said, starting down the hall.

Elizabeth watched him until he had gone into the elevator and then she closed the door behind her and turned to Daphne Hill. “Is that letter to Miss Wilson anywhere near written?” she asked.

“I was just doing it,” Daphne said.

“Bring it to me when you finish.” Elizabeth went into her office and closed the door and sat down at the desk. Frank, she was thinking, it couldn’t have been Frank. He would have said “Hello” or something, I haven’t changed that much. If it was Frank, what was he doing around here? It won’t do any good, she thought, there’s no way of finding him anyway.

She took the telephone book from the corner of her desk and looked for Frank’s name; it wasn’t there, and she turned further until she came to the H’s, running her finger down the page till she found Harris, James. Pulling the phone over she dialed the number and waited. When a man answered she said, “Is this Jim Harris?”

“That’s right,” he said.

“This is Elizabeth Style.”

“Hello,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to get in touch with me,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”

“I know it has,” he said. “Somehow I never seem to get around—”

“I’ll tell you what I called you about,” she said. “Do you remember Frank Davis?”

“I remember him,” he said. “What’s he doing now?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you,” she said.

“Oh. Well….”

She waited a minute, and then went on, “One of these days I’m going to take you up on that standing dinner date.”

“I hope you do,” he said. “I’ll call you.”

Oh, no, she thought. “It seems like such a long time since we got together. Listen.” She made her voice sound like this was a sudden idea, one of those unexpectedly brilliant things, “Why don’t we make it tonight?” He started to say something and she went on, “I’ve been dying to see you.”

“You see, my kid sister’s in town,” he said.

“Can’t she come along?” Elizabeth asked.

“Well,” he said, “I guess so.”

“Fine,” Elizabeth said. “You come on down to my place for a drink first, and bring the kid along, and we can have a grand talk about old times.”

“Suppose I call you back?” he asked.

“I’m leaving the office now,” Elizabeth said flatly. “I’ll be running around all afternoon. So let’s make it around seven?”

“All right,” he said.

“I’m so pleased we made it tonight,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll see you later.”

After she had hung up she sat for a minute with her hand on the phone, thinking, good old Harris, he never has a chance if you talk fast; he must get stuck for every dirty job around town. She laughed, pleased, and then stopped abruptly when Daphne knocked on the door; when Elizabeth said, “Come in,” Daphne opened the door cautiously and put her head in.

“I finished the letter, Miss Style,” she said.

“Bring it here,” Elizabeth said, and then added, “please.”

Daphne came in and held the letter out at arm’s length. “It isn’t very good,” she said. “But it’s my first letter by myself.”

Elizabeth glanced at the letter. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Sit down, Daphne.”

Daphne sat down gingerly on the edge of the chair. “Sit back,” Elizabeth said. “That’s the only chair I’ve got and I don’t want you breaking it.”

Daphne sat back and opened her eyes wide.

Elizabeth carefully opened her pocketbook and took out a pack of cigarettes and hunted for a match. “Just a minute,” Daphne said eagerly, “I’ve got some.” She hurried out to the outer office and came back with a package of matches. “Keep them,” she said, “I’ve got plenty more.”

Elizabeth lit her cigarette and put the matches down on the edge of the desk. “Now,” she said, and Daphne leaned forward. “Where did you work before you started here?”

“This is my first job,” Daphne said. “I just came to New York.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Buffalo,” Daphne said.

“So you came to New York to make your fortune?” Elizabeth asked. This is where I have dear Daphne, she was thinking, I’ve already made my fortune.

“I don’t know,” Daphne said. “My father brought us down here because his brother needed him in the business. We just moved here a couple of months ago.”

If I had a family to take care of me, Elizabeth thought, I wouldn’t have a job with Robert Shax. “What sort of an education have you had?”

“I went to high school in Buffalo,” Daphne said. “I was in business school for a while.”

“You want to be a writer?”

“No,” Daphne said, “I want to be an agent, like Mr. Shax. And you,” she added.

“It’s a fine business,” Elizabeth said. “You can make a lot of money at it.”

“That’s what Mr. Shax said. He was very nice about it.”

Daphne was getting braver. She was eyeing Elizabeth’s cigarette and had settled down comfortably in her chair.

Elizabeth was suddenly very tired; there was no sport in Daphne. “Mr. Shax and I were talking about you at lunch,” she said deliberately.

Daphne smiled. When she smiled, and when she was sitting down, without the appearance of that big body resting precariously on small feet, Daphne was an attractive girl. In spite of the small brown eyes, with that incredible mop of hair, Daphne was very attractive. I’m so thin, Elizabeth thought, and she said with pleasure, “I think you’d better rewrite that letter to Miss Wilson, Daphne.”

“Sure,” Daphne said.

“Telling her,” Elizabeth went on, “to come back to work as soon as she can.”

“Back here?” Daphne asked, with the smallest beginning of alarm.

“Back here,” Elizabeth said. She smiled. “I’m afraid Mr. Shax didn’t have courage enough to tell you,” she said. “Mr. Shax and I are, besides business partners,” she said, “very good friends. Frequently Mr. Shax takes advantage of our friendship and leaves the disagreeable tasks for me to do.”

“Mr. Shax didn’t tell me anything,” Daphne said.

“I didn’t think he had,” Elizabeth said, “when I saw how you went right ahead as though you were staying here.”

Daphne was frightened. She’s too stupid to cry, Elizabeth thought, but she’s going to have to have everything explained to her in detail. “Naturally,” Elizabeth went on, “I don’t like having to do this. Possibly I can make it easier for you by trying to help you get another job.”

Daphne nodded.

“This may help you,” Elizabeth said, “because Mr. Shax commented on it earlier, and it’s the sort of thing men are particular about. Your appearance.”

Daphne looked down at the ample front of her dress.

“Probably,” Elizabeth said, “you already know this, and I’m very rude to comment on it, but I think you’d make a better impression and if you ever get a job you’d be able to work more comfortably if you wore something to the office instead of a silk dress. It makes you seem, somehow, as though you were just in from Buffalo.”

“You want me to wear a suit or something?” Daphne asked. She spoke slowly and without malice.

“Something quieter, anyway,” Elizabeth said.

Daphne looked Elizabeth up and down. “A suit like yours?” she asked.

“A suit would be fine,” Elizabeth said. “And try to comb your hair down.”

Daphne touched the top of her head tenderly.

“Try to be more orderly, in general,” Elizabeth said. “You have beautiful hair, Daphne, but it would look more suitable to an office if you were to wear it more severely.”

“Like yours?” Daphne asked, looking at the grey in Elizabeth’s hair.

“Any way you please,” Elizabeth said, “just so it doesn’t look like a floor mop.” She turned pointedly back to her desk, and after a minute Daphne rose. “Take this back,” Elizabeth said, holding out the letter to Miss Wilson, “and rewrite it the way I told you to.”

“Yes, Miss Style,” Daphne said.

“You can go home as soon as you’re through with the letter,” Elizabeth said. “Leave it on your desk, along with your name and address, and Mr. Shax will send you your day’s pay.”

“I don’t care whether he does or not,” Daphne said abruptly.

Elizabeth looked up for a minute and regarded Daphne steadily. “Do you think you have any right to criticize Mr. Shax’s decisions?” she asked.

For a few minutes Elizabeth sat at her desk waiting to see what Daphne would do; after the door had closed quietly behind Daphne and she had walked to her desk there had been a heavy silence; she’s sitting at her desk there, Elizabeth thought, thinking it over. Then, finally, there was the small sound of Daphne’s pocketbook, the snap of the catch opening, the movement of a hand searching against keys, papers; she’s taking her compact out, Elizabeth thought, she’s looking to see if what I said about her appearance is true; she’s wondering if Robbie said anything, how he said it, whether I made it worse or smoothed it over for her. I should have told her he said she was a fat pig, or the ugliest thing he had ever seen; she might not even have seen through that. What’s she doing now?

Daphne had said “Damn” very distinctly; Elizabeth sat forward in her chair, not wanting to let any trace of action escape. Then there was the quiet sound of the typewriter; Daphne was typing the letter to Miss Wilson. Elizabeth shook her head slowly and laughed. She lighted a cigarette with one of Daphne’s matches, still on the edge of the desk, and looked blankly at the letter to Mr. Burton, still in the typewriter. Sitting with one arm hooked over the back of the chair and the cigarette in her mouth, she typed slowly, with one finger, “The hell with you, Burton,” and then tore the page out of the typewriter and threw it in the wastebasket. That’s every single bit of work I’ve done today, she told herself, and it doesn’t matter after looking at Daphne’s face when I told her. She looked at her desk, the letters waiting to be answered, the criticisms by a professional editor waiting to be written, the complaints to be satisfied, and thought, I’ll go on home. I can take a bath and clean the place and get some stuff for Jim and the kid sister; I’ll only wait till Daphne leaves.

“Daphne?” she called.

After a hesitation: “Yes, Miss Style?”

“Aren’t you through yet?” Elizabeth said; she could afford to let herself speak gently now. “That letter to Miss Wilson should only take a minute.”

“Just getting ready to leave,” Daphne said.

“Don’t forget to leave your name and address.”

There was a silence from the other room, and Elizabeth said to her closed door, raising her voice again, “Did you hear me?”

“Mr. Shax knows my name and address,” Daphne said. The outer door opened, and Daphne said, “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” Elizabeth said.

She got out of the taxi at her corner, and after paying the man, she had a ten-dollar bill and some change in her pocketbook; this, with twenty dollars more in her apartment, was all the money she had until she could ask Robbie for more. Figuring quickly, she decided to take ten dollars of her money at home to get her through the evening; Jim Harris would have to pay for her dinner; ten dollars, then, for taxis and emergencies; she would ask Robbie for more tomorrow. The money in her pocketbook would go for liquor and cocktail things; she stopped in the liquor store on the corner and bought a bottle of rye, a fifth, so that she would have some to offer Robbie the next time he came down. With her bottle under her arm she went into the delicatessen and bought ginger ale; hesitantly she selected a bag of potato chips and then a box of crackers and a liverwurst spread to put on them.

She was unused to entertaining; she and Robbie spent evenings quietly together, seldom seeing any people except an occasional client and, sometimes, an old friend who invited them out. Because they were not married, Robbie was reluctant to take her anywhere where he might be embarrassed by her presence. They ate their meals in small restaurants, did their rare drinking at home or in a corner bar, saw neighborhood movies. When it was necessary for Elizabeth to invite people to visit her Robbie was not there; they had once given a party in Robbie’s larger apartment to celebrate some great occasion, probably a client of some sort, and the party had been so miserable and the guest so uncomfortable that they had never given another and had been invited to only one or two.

Consequently Elizabeth, although she spoke so blithely of “coming down for a drink,” was almost completely at a loss when people actually came. As she climbed the stairs to her apartment, her packages braced between her arm and her chin, she was worrying over and over the progress of having a drink, the passing of crackers, the taking of coats.

The appearance of her room shocked her; she had forgotten her hurried departure this morning and the way she had left things around; also, the apartment was created and planned for Elizabeth; that is, the hurried departure every morning of a rather unhappy and desperate young woman with little or no ability to make things gracious, the lonely ugly evenings in one chair with one book and one ashtray, the nights spent dreaming of hot grass and heavy sunlight. There was no possible arrangement of these things that would permit of a casual grouping of three or four people, sitting easily around a room holding glasses, talking lightly. In the early evening, with one lamp on and the shadows in the corners, it looked warm and soft, but you had only to sit down in the one armchair, or touch a hand to the grey wood end table that looked polished, to see that the armchair was hard and cheap, the grey paint chipping.

For a minute Elizabeth stood in the doorway holding her packages, trying clearly to visualize her room as it might be smoothed out by an affectionate hand, but the noise of footsteps above coming down the stairs drove her inside with the door shut and, once in, there was no clear vision; she had her feet on the unpolished floor; there was a dirty fingerprint on the inside doorknob. Robbie’s, Elizabeth thought.

She opened the glass French doors that screened the kitchenette and put her packages down; the kitchenette was part of one wall, with a tiny stove built in under a cabinet, a sink installed over a refrigerator, and, over the sink, two shelves on which stood her collection of china: two plates, two cups and saucers, four glasses. She also owned a small saucepan, a frying-pan, and a coffeepot. She had bought all her small house furnishings in a five-and-ten a few years before, planning a tiny complete kitchen, where she could make miniature roasts for herself and Robbie, even bake a small pie or cookies, wearing a yellow apron and making funny mistakes at first. Although she had been a fairly competent cook when she first came to New York, capable of frying chops and potatoes, in the many years since she had been near a real stove she had lost all her knowledge except the fudge-making play in which she indulged herself occasionally. Cooking was, like everything else she had known, a decent honest knowledge meant to make her a capable happy woman (“the way to a man’s heart,” her mother used to say soberly), which, with the rest of her daily life, had sunk to a miniature useful only as a novelty on rare occasions.

She had to take down the four glasses and wash them; they were dusty from standing so long unused on the open shelf. She checked the refrigerator. For a while she had kept butter and eggs in the refrigerator, and bread and coffee in the cabinet, but they had grown mouldy and rancid before she had been able to make more than one breakfast from them; she was so often late and so seldom inclined to take time over her own breakfast.

It was only four-thirty; she had time to straighten things up and bathe and dress. Her first care was for the easy things in the apartment; she dusted the tables and emptied the ashtray, stopping to put her dustcloth down and pull the bedcovers even, smoothing the spread down to a regular roundness. She was tempted to take up the three small scatter rugs and shake them, and then wash the floor, but a glance at the bathroom discouraged her; they would certainly be in and out of the bathroom, and the floor and tub and even the walls badly needed washing. She used her dust cloth soaked in hot water from the tap, getting the floor clean at last; she put out clean towels from her small stock and started her bath water while she went back to finish the big room.

After all her haphazard work the room looked the same; still grey and inhospitable in the rainy afternoon light. She debated for a minute running downstairs for some bright flowers, and then decided that her money wouldn’t last that far; they would only be in the room for a short while anyway, and with something to drink and something to eat any room should look friendly.

When she finished her bath it was nearly six, and dark enough to light the lamp on the end table. She walked barefoot across the room, feeling clean and freshened, conscious of the cologne she had put on, with her hair curling a little from the hot water. With the feeling of cleanness came an excitement; she would be happy tonight, she would be successful, something wonderful would happen to change her whole life. Following out this feeling she chose a dark red silk dress from the closet; it was youthfully styled and without the grey in her hair it made her look nearer twenty than over thirty. She selected a heavy gold chain to wear with it, and thought, I can wear my good black coat, even if it’s raining I’ll wear it to feel nice.

While she dressed she thought about her home. Considered honestly, there was no way to do anything with this apartment, no yellow drapes or pictures would help. She needed a new apartment, a pleasant open place with big windows and pale furniture, with the sun coming in all day. To get a new apartment she needed more money, she needed a new job, and Jim Harris would have to help her; tonight would be only the first of many exciting dinners together, building into a lovely friendship that would get her a job and a sunny apartment; while she was planning her new life she forgot Jim Harris, his heavy face, his thin voice; he was a stranger, a gallant dark man with knowing eyes who watched her across a room, he was someone who loved her, he was a quiet troubled man who needed sunlight, a warm garden, green lawns….

A Fine Old Firm

MRS. CONCORD and her older daughter, Helen, were sitting in their living-room, sewing and talking and trying to keep warm. Helen had just put down the stockings she had been mending and walked over to the French doors that opened out on to the garden. “I wish spring would hurry up and get here,” she was saying when the doorbell rang.

“Good Lord,” Mrs. Concord said, “if that’s company! The rug’s all covered with loose threads.” She leaned over in her chair and began to gather up the odds and ends of material around her as Helen went to answer the door. She opened it and stood smiling while the woman outside held out a hand and began to talk rapidly. “You’re Helen? I’m Mrs. Friedman,” she said. “I hope you won’t think I’m just breaking in on you, but I have been so anxious to meet you and your mother.”

“How do you do?” Helen said. “Won’t you come in?” She opened the door wider and Mrs. Friedman stepped in. She was small and dark and wearing a very smart leopard coat. “Is your mother home?” she asked Helen just as Mrs. Concord came out of the living room.

“I’m Mrs. Concord,” Helen’s mother said.

“I’m Mrs. Friedman,” Mrs. Friedman said. “Bob Friedman’s mother.”

“Bob Friedman,” Mrs. Concord repeated.

Mrs. Friedman smiled apologetically. “I thought surely your boy would have mentioned Bobby,” she said.

“Of course he has,” Helen said suddenly. “He’s the one Charlie’s always writing about, Mother. It’s so hard to make a connection,” she said to Mrs. Friedman, “because Charlie seems so far away.”

Mrs. Concord was nodding. “Of course,” she said. “Won’t you come in and sit down?”

Mrs. Friedman followed the Concords into the living-room and sat in one of the chairs not filled with sewing. Mrs. Concord waved her hand at the room. “It makes such a mess,” she said, “but every now and then Helen and I just get to work and make things. These are kitchen curtains,” she added, picking up the material she had been working on.

“They’re very nice,” Mrs. Friedman said politely.

“Well, tell us about your son,” Mrs. Concord went on. “I’m amazed that I didn’t recognize the name right away, but somehow I associate Bob Friedman with Charles and the Army, and it seemed strange to have his mother here in town.”

Mrs. Friedman laughed. “That’s just about the way I felt,” she said. “Bobby wrote me that his friend’s mother lived here only a few blocks from us, and said why didn’t I drop in and say Hello.”

“I’m so glad you did,” Mrs. Concord said.

“I guess we know about as much about Bob as you do by now,” Helen said. “Charlie’s always writing about him.”

Mrs. Friedman opened her purse. “I even have a letter from Charlie,” she said. “I thought you’d like to take a look at it.”

“Charles wrote you?” Mrs. Concord asked.

“Just a note. He likes the pipe tobacco I send Bobby,” Mrs. Friedman explained, “and I put a tin of it in for him the last time I sent Bobby a package.” She handed the letter to Mrs. Concord and said to Helen, “I imagine I could tell you all about yourselves, Bobby’s said so much about all of you.”

“Well,” Helen said, “I know that Bob got you a Japanese sword for Christmas. 7bat must have looked lovely under the tree. Charlie helped him buy it from the boy that had it—did you hear about that, and how they almost had a fight with the boy?”

“Bobby almost had a fight,” Mrs. Friedman said. “Charlie was smart and stayed out of it.”

“No, we heard it that Charlie was the one who got in trouble,” Helen said. She and Mrs. Friedman laughed.

“Maybe we shouldn’t compare notes,” Mrs. Friedman said. “They don’t seem to stick together on their stories.” She turned to Mrs. Concord, who had finished the letter and handed it to Helen. “I was just telling your daughter how many complimentary things I’ve heard about you.”

“We’ve heard a lot about you, too,” Mrs. Concord said.

“Charlie showed Bob a picture of you and your two daughters. The younger one’s Nancy, isn’t it?”

“Nancy, yes,” Mrs. Concord said.

“Well, Charlie certainly thinks a lot of his family,” Mrs. Friedman said. “Wasn’t he nice to write me?” she asked Helen.

“That tobacco must be good,” Helen said. She hesitated for a minute and handed the letter back to Mrs. Friedman, who put it in her purse.

“I’d love to meet Charlie sometime,” Mrs. Friedman said. “It seems as though I know him so well.”

“I’m sure he’ll want to meet you when he comes back,” Mrs. Concord said.

“I hope it won’t be long now,” Mrs. Friedman said. All three were silent for a minute, and then Mrs. Friedman went on with animation, “It seems so strange that we’ve been living in the same town and it took our boys so far away to introduce us.”

“This is a very hard town to get acquainted in,” Mrs. Concord said.

“Have you lived here long?” Mrs. Friedman smiled apologetically. “Of course I know of your husband,” she added. “My sister’s children are in your husband’s high school and they speak so highly of him.”

“Really?” Mrs. Concord said. “My husband has lived here all his life. I came here from the West when I was married.”

“Then it hasn’t been hard for you to get settled and make friends,” Mrs. Friedman said.

“No, I never had much trouble,” Mrs. Concord said. “Of course most of our friends are people who went to school with my husband.”

“I’m sorry Bobby never got a chance to study under Mr. Concord,” Mrs. Friedman said. “Well….” She rose. “I have certainly enjoyed meeting you at last.”

“I’m so glad you came over,” Mrs. Concord said. “It’s like having a letter from Charles.”

“And I know how welcome a letter can be, the way I wait for Bobby’s,” Mrs. Friedman said. She and Mrs. Concord started for the door and Helen got up and followed them. “My husband is very much interested in Charlie, you know. Ever since he found out that Charlie was studying law when he went into the Army.”

“Your husband is a lawyer?” Mrs. Concord asked.

“He’s the Friedman of Grunewald, Friedman & White,” Mrs. Friedman said. “When Charlie is ready to start out for himself, perhaps my husband could find a place for him.”

“That’s awfully kind of you,” Mrs. Concord said. “Charles will be so sorry when I tell him. You see, it’s always been sort of arranged that he’d go in with Charles Satterthwaite, my husband’s oldest friend. Satterthwaite & Harris.”

“I believe Mr. Friedman knows the firm,” Mrs. Friedman said.

“A fine old firm,” Mrs. Concord said. “Mr. Concord’s grandfather used to be a partner.”

“Give Bob our best regards when you write him,” Helen said.

“I will,” Mrs. Friedman said. “I’ll tell him all about meeting you. It’s been very nice,” she said, holding out her hand to Mrs. Concord.

“I’ve enjoyed it,” Mrs. Concord said.

“Tell Charlie I’ll send him some more tobacco,” Mrs. Friedman said to Helen.

“I certainly will,” Helen said.

“Well, good-bye then,” Mrs. Friedman said.

“Good-bye,” Mrs. Concord said.

The Dummy

IT WAS a respectable, well-padded restaurant with a good chef and a group of entertainers who called themselves a floor show; the people who came there laughed quietly and dined thoroughly, appreciating the principle that the check was always a little more than the restaurant and the entertainment and the company warranted; it was a respectable, likable restaurant, and two women could go into it alone with perfect decorum and have a faintly exciting dinner. When Mrs. Wilkins and Mrs. Straw came noiselessly down the carpeted staircase into the restaurant none of the waiters looked up more than once, quickly, few of the guests turned, and the headwaiter came quietly and bowed agreeably before he turned to the room and the few vacant tables far in the back.

“Do you mind being so far away from everything, Alice?” Mrs. Wilkins, who was hostess, said to Mrs. Straw. “We can wait for a table, if you like. Or go somewhere else?”

“Of course not.” Mrs. Straw was a rather large woman in a heavy flowered hat, and she looked affectionately at the substantial dinners set on near-by tables. “I don’t mind where we sit; this is really lovely.”

“Anywhere will do,” Mrs. Wilkins said to the headwaiter. “Not too far back if you can help it.”

The headwaiter listened carefully and nodded, stepping delicately off between the tables to one very far back, near the doorway where the entertainers came in and out, near the table where the lady who owned the restaurant was sitting drinking beer, near the kitchen doors. “Nothing nearer?” Mrs. Wilkins said, frowning at the headwaiter.

The headwaiter shrugged, gesturing at the other vacant tables. One was behind a post, another was set for a large party, a third was somehow behind the small orchestra.

“This will do beautifully, Jen,” Mrs. Straw said. “We’ll sit right down.”

Mrs. Wilkins hesitated still, but Mrs. Straw pulled out the chair on one side of the table and sat down with a sigh, setting her gloves and pocketbook on the extra chair beside her, and reaching to unfasten the collar of her coat.

“I can’t say I like this,” Mrs. Wilkins said, sliding into the chair opposite. “I’m not sure we can see anything.”

“Of course we can,” Mrs. Straw said. “We can see all that’s going on, and of course we’ll be able to hear everything. Would you like to sit here instead?” she finished reluctantly.

“Of course not, Alice,” Mrs. Wilkins said. She accepted the menu the waiter was offering her and set it down on the table, scanning it rapidly. “The food is quite good here,” she said.

“Shrimp casserole,” Mrs. Straw said. “Fried chicken.” She sighed. “I certainly am hungry.”

Mrs. Wilkins ordered quickly, with no debate, and then helped Mrs. Straw choose. When the waiter had gone Mrs. Straw leaned back comfortably and turned in her chair to see all of the restaurant. “This is a lovely place,” she said.

“The people seem to be very nice,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “The woman who owns it is sitting over there, in back of you. I’ve always thought she looked very clean and decent.”

“She probably makes sure the glasses are washed,” Mrs. Straw said. She turned back to the table and picked up her pocketbook, diving deep into it after a pack of cigarettes and a box of wooden safety matches, which she set on the table. “I like to see a place that serves food kept nice and clean,” she said.

“They make a lot of money from this place,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “Tom and I used to come here years ago before they enlarged it. It was very nice then, but it attracts a better class of people now.”

Mrs. Straw regarded the crabmeat cocktail now in front of her with deep satisfaction. “Yes, indeed,” she said.

Mrs. Wilkins picked up her fork indifferently, watching Mrs. Straw. “I had a letter from Walter yesterday,” she said.

“What’d he have to say?” Mrs. Straw asked.

“He seems fine,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “Seems like there’s a lot he doesn’t tell us.”

“Walter’s a good boy,” Mrs. Straw said. “You worry too much.”

The orchestra began to play suddenly and violently and the lights darkened to a spotlight on the stage.

“I hate to eat in the dark,” Mrs. Wilkins said.

“We’ll get plenty of light back here from those doors,” Mrs. Straw said. She put down her fork and turned to watch the orchestra.

“They’ve made Walter a proctor,” Mrs. Wilkins said.

“He’ll be first in his class,” Mrs. Straw said. “Look at the dress on that girl.”

Mrs. Wilkins turned covertly, looking at the girl Mrs. Straw had indicated with her head. The girl had come out of the doorway that led to the entertainers’ rooms; she was tall and very dark, with heavy black hair and thick eyebrows, and the dress was electric green satin, cut very low, with a flaming orange flower on one shoulder. “I never did see a dress like that,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “She must be going to dance or something.”

“She’s not a very pretty girl,” Mrs. Straw said. “And look at the fellow with her!”

Mrs. Wilkins turned again, and moved her head back quickly to smile at Mrs. Straw. “He looks like a monkey,” she said.

“So little,” Mrs. Straw said. “I hate those flabby little blond men.”

“They used to have such a nice floor show here,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “Music, and dancers, and sometimes a nice young man who would sing requests from the audience. Once they had an organist, I think.”

“This is our dinner coming along now,” Mrs. Straw said. The music had faded down, and the leader of the orchestra, who acted as master of ceremonies, introduced the first number, a pair of ballroom dancers. When the applause started, a tall young man and a tall young woman came out of the entertainers’ door and made their way through the tables to the dance floor; on their way they both gave a nod of recognition to the girl in electric green and the man with her.

“Aren’t they graceful?” Mrs. Wilkins said when the dance started. “They always look so pretty, that kind of dancers.”

“They have to watch their weight,” Mrs. Straw said critically. “Look at the figure on the girl in green.”

Mrs. Wilkins turned again. “I hope they’re not comedians.”

“They don’t look very funny right now,” Mrs. Straw said. She estimated the butter left on her plate. “Every time I eat a good dinner,” she said, “I think of Walter and the food we used to get in school.”

“Walter writes that the food is quite good,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “He’s gained something like three pounds.”

Mrs. Straw raised her eyes. “For heaven’s sake!”

“What is it?”

“I think he’s a ventriloquist,” Mrs. Straw said. “I do believe he is.”

“They’re very popular right now,” Mrs. Wilkins said.

“I haven’t seen one since I was a kid,” Mrs. Straw said. “He’s got a little man—what do you call them?—in that box there.” She continued to watch, her mouth a little open. “Look at it, Jen.”

The girl in green and the man had sat down at a table near the entertainers’ door. She was leaning forward, watching the dummy, which was sitting on the man’s lap. It was a grotesque wooden copy of the man—where he was blond, the dummy was extravagantly yellow-haired, with sleek wooden curls and sideburns; where the man was small and ugly, the dummy was smaller and uglier, with the same wide mouth, the same staring eyes, the horrible parody of evening clothes, complete to tiny black shoes.

“I wonder how they happen to have a ventriloquist here,” Mrs. Wilkins said.

The girl in green was leaning across the table to the dummy, straightening his tie, fastening one shoe, smoothing the shoulders of his coat. As she leaned back again the man spoke to her and she shrugged indifferently.

“I can’t take my eyes off that green dress,” Mrs. Straw said. She started as the waiter came softly up to her with the menu, waiting uneasily for their dessert orders, his eye on the stage where the orchestra was finishing a between-acts number. By the time Mrs. Straw had decided on apple pie with chocolate ice cream the master of ceremonies was introducing the ventriloquist “…and Marmaduke, a chip off the old block!”

“I hope it’s not very long,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “We can’t hear from here anyway.”

The ventriloquist and the dummy were sitting in the spotlight, both grinning widely, talking fast; the man’s weak blond face was close to the dummy’s staring grin, their black shoulders against one another. Their conversation was rapid; the audience was laughing affectionately, knowing most of the jokes before the dummy finished speaking, silent with interest for a minute and then laughing again before the words were out.

“I think he’s terrible,” Mrs. Wilkins said to Mrs. Straw during one roar of laughter. “They’re always so coarse.”

“Look at our friend in the green dress,” Mrs. Straw said. The girl was leaning forward, following every word, tense and excited. For a minute the heavy sullenness of her face had vanished; she was laughing with everyone else, her eyes light. “She thinks it’s funny,” Mrs. Straw said.

Mrs. Wilkins drew her shoulders closer together and shivered. She attacked her dish of ice cream primly

“I always wonder,” she began after a minute, “why places like this, you know, with really good food, never seem to think about desserts. It’s always ice cream or something.”

“Nothing better than ice cream,” Mrs. Straw said.

“You’d think they’d have pastries, or some nice pudding,” Mrs. Wilkins said. “They never seem to give any thought to it.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that fig-and-date pudding you make, Jen,” Mrs. Straw said.

“Walter always used to say that was the best—” Mrs. Wilkins began, and was cut short by a blare from the orchestra. The ventriloquist and the dummy were bowing, the man bowing deeply from the waist and the dummy bobbing his head courteously; the orchestra began quickly with a dance tune, and the man and the dummy turned and trotted off the stage.

“Thank heavens,” Mrs. Wilkins said.

“I haven’t seen one of those for years,” Mrs. Straw said.

The girl in green had risen, waiting for the man and the dummy to come back to the table. The man sat down heavily, the dummy still on his knee, and the girl sat down again, on the edge of her chair, asking him something urgently.

“What do you think?” he said loudly, without looking at her. He waved to a waiter, who hesitated, looking in back of him at the table where the woman who owned the restaurant was sitting alone. After a minute the waiter approached the man, and the girl said, her voice clear over the soft waltz the orchestra was playing, “Don’t drink anything more, Joey, we’ll go somewhere and eat.”

The man spoke to the waiter, ignoring the girl’s hand on his arm. He turned to the dummy, speaking softly, and the dummy’s face and broad grin looked at the girl and then back at the man. The girl sat back, looking out of the corners of her eyes at the owner of the restaurant.

“I’d hate to be married to a man like that,” Mrs. Straw said.

“He’s certainly not a very good comedian,” Mrs. Wilkins said.

The girl was leaning forward again, arguing, and the man was talking to the dummy, making the dummy nod in agreement. When the girl put a hand on his shoulder the man shrugged it away without turning around. The girl’s voice rose again. “Listen, Joey,” she was saying.

“In a minute,” the man said. “I just want to have this one drink.”

“Yeah, leave him alone, can’t you?” the dummy said.

“You don’t need another drink now, Joey,” the girl said. “You can get another drink later.”

The man said, “Look, honey, I’ve got a drink ordered. I can’t leave before it comes.”

“Why don’t you make old deadhead shut up?” the dummy said to the man, “always making a fuss when she sees someone having a good time. Why don’t you tell her to shut up?”

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” the man said to the dummy. “It’s not nice.”

“I can talk if I want to,” the dummy said. “She can’t make me stop.”

“Joey,” the girl said, “I want to talk to you. Listen, let’s go somewhere and talk.”

“Shut up for a minute,” the dummy said to the girl. “For God’s sake will you shut up for a minute?”

People at nearby tables were beginning to turn, interested in the dummy’s loud voice, and laughing already, hearing him talk. “Please be quiet,” the girl said.

“Yeah, don’t make such a fuss,” the man said to the dummy. “I’m just going to have this one drink. She doesn’t mind.”

“He’s not going to bring you any drink,” the girl said impatiently. “They told him not to. They wouldn’t give you a drink here, the way you’re acting.”

“I’m acting fine,” the man said.

“I’m the one making the fuss,” the dummy said. “It’s time someone told you, sweetheart, you’re going to get into trouble acting like a wet blanket all the time. A man won’t stand for it forever.”

“Be quiet,” the girl said, looking around her anxiously. “Everyone can hear you.”

“Let them hear me,” the dummy said. He turned his grinning head around at his audience and raised his voice. “Just because a man wants to have a good time she has to freeze up like an icebag.”

“Now, Marmaduke,” the man said to the dummy, “you’d better talk nicer to your old mother.”

“Why, I wouldn’t tell that old bag the right time,” the dummy said. “If she doesn’t like it here, let her get back on the streets.”

Mrs. Wilkins’ mouth opened, and shut again; she put her napkin down on the table and stood up. While Mrs. Straw watched blankly she walked over to the other table and slapped the dummy sharply across the face.

By the time she had turned and come back to her own table Mrs. Straw had her coat on and was standing.

“We’ll pay on the way out,” Mrs. Wilkins said curtly.

She picked up her coat and the two of them walked with dignity to the door. For a moment the man and girl sat looking at the dummy slumped over sideways, its head awry. Then the girl reached over and straightened the wooden head.

Seven Types of Ambiguity

THE BASEMENT ROOM of the bookstore seemed to be enormous; it stretched in long rows of books off into dimness at either end, with books lined in tall bookcases along the walls, and books standing in piles on the floor. At the foot of the spiral staircase winding down from the neat small store upstairs, Mr. Harris, owner and sales-clerk of the bookstore, had a small desk, cluttered with catalogues, lighted by one dirty overhead lamp. The same lamp served to light the shelves which crowded heavily around Mr. Harris’ desk; farther away, along the lines of book tables, there were other dirty overhead lamps, to be lighted by pulling a string and turned off by the customer when he was ready to grope his way back to Mr. Harris’ desk, pay for his purchases and have them wrapped. Mr. Harris, who knew the position of any author or any title in all the heavy shelves, had one customer at the moment, a boy of about eighteen, who was standing far down the long room directly under one of the lamps, leafing through a book he had selected from the shelves. It was cold in the big basement room; both Mr. Harris and the boy had their coats on. Occasionally Mr. Harris got up from his desk to put a meagre shovelful of coal on a small iron stove which stood in the curve of the staircase. Except when Mr. Harris got up, or the boy turned to put a book back into the shelves and take out another, the room was quiet, the books standing silent in the dim light.

Then the silence was broken by the sound of the door opening in the little upstairs bookshop where Mr. Harris kept his best-sellers and art books on display. There was the sound of voices, while both Mr. Harris and the boy listened, and then the girl who took care of the upstairs bookshop said, “Right on down the stairs. Mr. Harris will help you.”

Mr. Harris got up and walked around to the foot of the stairs, turning on another of the overhead lamps so that his new customer would be able to see his way down. The boy put his book back in the shelves and stood with his hand on the back of it, still listening.

When Mr. Harris saw that it was a woman coming down the stairs he stood back politely and said, “Watch the bottom step. There’s one more than people think.” The woman stepped carefully down and stood looking around. While she stood there a man came carefully around the turn in the staircase, ducking his head so his hat would clear the low ceiling. “Watch the bottom step,” the woman said in a soft clear voice. The man came down beside her and raised his head to look around as she had.

“Quite a lot of books you have here,” he said.

Mr. Harris smiled his professional smile. “Can I help you?”

The woman looked at the man, and he hesitated a minute and then said, “We want to get some books. Quite a few of them.” He waved his hand inclusively. “Sets of books.”

“Well, if it’s books you want,” Mr. Harris said, and smiled again. “Maybe the lady would like to come over and sit down?” He led the way around to his desk, the woman following him and the man walking uneasily between the tables of books, his hands close to his sides as though he were afraid of breaking something. Mr. Harris gave the lady his desk chair and then sat down on the edge of his desk, shoving aside a pile of catalogues.

“This is a very interesting place,” the lady said, in the same soft voice she had used when she spoke before. She was middle-aged and nicely dressed; all her clothes were fairly new, but quiet and well planned for her age and air of shyness. The man was big and hearty-looking, his face reddened by the cold air and his big hands holding a pair of wool gloves uneasily.

“We’d like to buy some of your books,” the man said. “Some good books.”

“Anything in particular?” Mr. Harris asked.

The man laughed loudly, but with embarrassment. “Tell the truth,” he said, “I sound sort of foolish, now. But I don’t know much about these things, like books.” In the large quiet store his voice seemed to echo, after his wife’s soft voice and Mr. Harris’. “We were sort of hoping you’d be able to tell us,” he said. “None of this trash they turn out nowadays.” He cleared his throat. “Something like Dickens,” he said.

“Dickens,” Mr. Harris said.

“I used to read Dickens when I was a kid,” the man said. “Books like that, now, good books.” He looked up as the boy who had been standing off among the books came over to them. “I’d like to read Dickens again,” the big man said.

“Mr. Harris,” the boy asked quietly.

Mr. Harris looked up. “Yes, Mr. Clark?” he said.

The boy came closer to the desk, as though unwilling to interrupt Mr. Harris with his customers. “I’d like to take another look at the Empson,” he said.

Mr. Harris turned to the glass-doored bookcase immediately behind his desk and selected a book. “Here it is,” he said, “you’ll have it read through before you buy it at this rate.” He smiled at the big man and his wife. “Some day he’s going to come in and buy that book,” he said, “and I’m going to go out of business from shock.”

The boy turned away, holding the book, and the big man leaned forward to Mr. Harris. “I figure I’d like two good sets, big, like Dickens,” he said, “and then a couple of smaller sets.”

“And a copy of Jane Eyre,” his wife said, in her soft voice. “I used to love that book,” she said to Mr. Harris.

“I can let you have a very nice set of the Brontës,” Mr. Harris said. “Beautiful binding.”

“I want them to look nice,” the man said, “but solid, for reading. I’m going to read through all of Dickens again.”

The boy came back to the desk, holding the book out to Mr. Harris. “It still looks good,” he said.

“It’s right here when you want it,” Mr. Harris said, turning back to the bookcase with the book. “It’s pretty scarce, that book.”

“I guess it’ll be here a while longer,” the boy said.

“What’s the name of this book?” the big man asked curiously.

“Seven Types of Ambiguity,” the boy said. “It’s quite a good book.”

“There’s a fine name for a book,” the big man said to Mr. Harris. “Pretty smart young fellow, reading books with names like that.”

“It’s a good book,” the boy repeated.

“I’m trying to buy some books myself,” the big man said to the boy. “I want to catch up on a few I’ve missed. Dickens, I’ve always liked his books.”

“Meredith is good,” the boy said. “You ever try reading Meredith?”

“Meredith,” the big man said. “Let’s see a few of your books,” he said to Mr. Harris. “I’d sort of like to pick out a few I want.”

“Can I take the gentleman down there?” the boy said to Mr. Harris. “I’ve got to go back anyway to get my hat.”

“I’ll go with the young man and look at the books, Mother,” the big man said to his wife. “You stay here and keep warm.”

“Fine,” Mr. Harris said. “He knows where the books are as well as I do,” he said to the big man.

The boy started off down the aisle between the book tables, and the big man followed, still walking carefully, trying not to touch anything. They went down past the lamp still burning where the boy had left his hat and gloves, and the boy turned on another lamp further down. “Mr. Harris keeps most of his sets around here,” the boy said. “Let’s see what we can find.” He squatted down in front of the bookcases, touching the backs of the rows of books lightly with his fingers. “How do you feel about the prices?” he asked.

“I’m willing to pay a reasonable amount for the books I have in mind,” the big man said. He touched the book in front of him experimentally, with one finger. “A hundred and fifty, two hundred dollars altogether.”

The boy looked up at him and laughed. “That ought to get you some nice books,” he said.

“Never saw so many books in my life,” the big man said. “I never thought I’d see the day when I’d just walk into a bookstore and buy up all the books I always wanted to read.”

“It’s a good feeling.”

“I never got a chance to read much,” the man said. “Went right into the machine-shop where my father worked when I was much younger than you, and worked ever since. Now all of a sudden I find I have a little more money than I used to, and Mother and I decided we’d like to get ourselves a few things we always wanted.”

“Your wife was interested in the Brontës,” the boy said. “Here’s a very good set.”

The man leaned down to look at the books the boy pointed out. “I don’t know much about these things,” he said. “They look nice, all alike. What’s the next set?”

“Carlyle,” the boy said. “You can skip him. He’s not quite what you’re looking for. Meredith is good. And Thackeray. I think you’d want Thackeray; he’s a great writer.”

The man took one of the books the boy handed him and opened it carefully, using only two fingers from each of his big hands. “This looks fine,” he said.

“I’ll write them down,” the boy said. He took a pencil and a pocket memorandum from his coat pocket. “Brontës,” he said, “Dickens, Meredith, Thackeray.” He ran his hand along each of the sets as he read them off.

The big man narrowed his eyes. “I ought to take one more,” he said. “These won’t quite fill up the bookcase I got for them.”

“Jane Austen,” the boy said. “Your wife would be pleased with that.”

“You read all these books?” the man asked.

“Most of them,” the boy said.

The man was quiet for a minute and then he went on, “I never got much of a chance to read anything, going to work so early. I’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

“You’re going to have a fine time,” the boy said.

“That book you had a while back,” the man said. “What was that book?”

“It’s aesthetics,” the boy said. “About literature. It’s very scarce. I’ve been trying to buy it for quite a while and haven’t had the money.”

“You go to college?” the man asked.

“Yes.”

“Here’s one I ought to read again,” the man said. “Mark Twain. I read a couple of his books when I was a kid. But I guess I have enough to start on.” He stood up.

The boy rose too, smiling. “You’re going to have to do a lot of reading.”

“I like to read,” the man said. “I really like to read.”

He started back down the aisles, going straight for Mr. Harris’ desk. The boy turned off the lamps and followed, stopping to get his hat and gloves. When the big man reached Mr. Harris’ desk he said to his wife, “That’s sure a smart kid. He knows those books right and left.”

“Did you pick out what you want?” his wife asked.

“The kid has a fine list for me.” He turned to Mr. Harris and went on, “It’s quite an experience seeing a kid like that liking books the way he does. When I was his age I was working for four or five years.”

The boy came up with the slip of paper in his hand. “These ought to hold him for a while,” he said to Mr. Harris.

Mr. Harris glanced at the list and nodded. “That Thackeray’s a nice set of books,” he said.

The boy had put his hat on and was standing at the foot of the stairs. “Hope you enjoy them,” he said. “I’ll be back for another look at that Empson, Mr. Harris.”

“I’ll try to keep it around for you,” Mr. Harris said. “I can’t promise to hold it, you know.”

“I’ll just count on it’s being here,” the boy said.

“Thanks, son,” the big man called out as the boy started up the stairs. “Appreciate your helping me.”

“That’s all right,” the boy said.

“He’s sure a smart kid,” the man said to Mr. Harris. “He’s got a great chance, with an education like that.”

“He’s a nice young fellow,” Mr. Harris said, “and he sure wants that book.”

“You think he’ll ever buy it?” the big man asked.

“I doubt it,” Mr. Harris said. “If you’ll just write down your name and address, I’ll add these prices.”

Mr. Harris began to note down the prices of the books, copying from the boy’s neat list. After the big man had written his name and address, he stood for a minute drumming his fingers on the desk, and then he said, “Can I have another look at that book?”

“The Empson?” Mr. Harris said, looking up.

“The one the boy was so interested in.” Mr. Harris reached around to the bookcase in back of him and took out the book. The big man held it delicately, as he had held the others, and he frowned as he turned the pages. Then he put the book down on Mr. Harris’ desk.

“If he isn’t going to buy it, will it be all right if I put this in with the rest?” he asked.

Mr. Harris looked up from his figures for a minute, and then he made the entry on his list. He added quickly, wrote down the total, and then pushed the paper across the desk to the big man. While the man checked over the figures Mr. Harris turned to the woman and said, “Your husband has bought a lot of very pleasant reading.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “We’ve been looking forward to it for a long time.”

The big man counted out the money carefully, handing the bills to Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris put the money in the top drawer of his desk and said, “We can have these delivered to you by the end of the week, if that will be all right.”

“Fine,” the big man said. “Ready, Mother?”

The woman rose, and the big man stood back to let her go ahead of him. Mr. Harris followed, stopping near the stairs to say to the woman, “Watch the bottom step.”

They started up the stairs and Mr. Harris stood watching them until they got to the turn. Then he switched off the dirty overhead lamp and went back to his desk.

Come Dance with Me in Ireland

YOUNG MRS. ARCHER was sitting on the bed with Kathy Valentine and Mrs. Corn, playing with the baby and gossiping, when the doorbell rang. Mrs. Archer, saying, “Oh, dear!,” went to push the buzzer that released the outside door of the apartment building. “We had to live on the ground floor,” she called to Kathy and Mrs. Corn. “Everybody rings our bell for everything.”

When the inner doorbell rang she opened the door of the apartment and saw an old man standing in the outer hall. He was wearing a long, shabby black overcoat and had a square white beard. He held out a handful of shoelaces.

“Oh,” Mrs. Archer said. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, but—”

“Madam,” the old man said, “if you would be so kind. A nickel apiece.”

Mrs. Archer shook her head and backed away. “I’m afraid not,” she said.

“Thank you anyway, Madam,” he said, “for speaking courteously. The first person on this block who has been decently polite to a poor old man.”

Mrs. Archer turned the doorknob back and forth nervously. “I’m awfully sorry,” she said. Then, as he turned to go, she said, “Wait a minute,” and hurried into the bedroom. “Old man selling shoelaces,” she whispered. She pulled open the top dresser drawer, took out her pocketbook, and fumbled in the change purse. “Quarter,” she said. “Think it’s all right?”

“Sure,” Kathy said. “Probably more than he’s gotten all day.” She was Mrs. Archer’s age, and unmarried. Mrs. Corn was a stout woman in her middle fifties. They both lived in the building and spent a good deal of time at Mrs. Archer’s, on account of the baby.

Mrs. Archer returned to the front door. “Here,” she said, holding out the quarter. “I think it’s a shame everyone was so rude.”

The old man started to offer her some shoelaces, but his hand shook and the shoelaces dropped to the floor. He leaned heavily against the wall. Mrs. Archer watched, horrified. “Good Lord,” she said, and put out her hand. As her fingers touched the dirty old overcoat she hesitated and then, tightening her lips, she put her arm firmly through his and tried to help him through the doorway. “Girls,” she called, “come help me, quick!”

Kathy came running out of the bedroom, saying, “Did you call, Jean?” and then stopped dead, staring.

“What’ll I do?” Mrs. Archer said, standing with her arm through the old man’s. His eyes were closed and he seemed barely able, with her help, to stand on his feet. “For heaven’s sake, grab him on the other side.”

“Get him to a chair or something,” Kathy said. The hall was too narrow for all three of them to go down side by side, so Kathy took the old man’s other arm and half-led Mrs. Archer and him into the living-room. “Not in the good chair,” Mrs. Archer exclaimed. “In the old leather one.” They dropped the old man into the leather chair and stood back. “What on earth do we do now?” Mrs. Archer said.

“Do you have any whiskey?” Kathy asked.

Mrs. Archer shook her head. “A little wine,” she said doubtfully.

Mrs. Corn came into the living-room, holding the baby. “Gracious!” she said. “He’s drunk!”

“Nonsense,” Kathy said. “I wouldn’t have let Jean bring him in if he were.”

“Watch out for the baby, Blanche,” Mrs. Archer said.

“Naturally,” Mrs. Corn said. “We’re going back into the bedroom, honey,” she said to the baby, “and then we’re going to get into our lovely crib and go beddy-bye.”

The old man stirred and opened his eyes. He tried to get up.

“Now you stay right where you are,” Kathy ordered, “and Mrs. Archer here is going to bring you a little bit of wine. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

The old man raised his eyes to Kathy. “Thank you,” he said.

Mrs. Archer went into the kitchen. After a moment’s thought she took the glass from over the sink, rinsed it out, and poured some sherry into it. She took the glass of sherry back into the living-room and handed it to Kathy.

“Shall I hold it for you or can you drink by yourself?” Kathy asked the old man.

“You are much too kind,” he said, and reached for the glass. Kathy steadied it for him as he sipped from it, and then he pushed it away.

“That’s enough, thank you,” he said. “Enough to revive me.” He tried to rise. “Thank you,” he said to Mrs. Archer, “and thank you,” to Kathy. “I had better be going along.”

“Not until you’re quite firm on your feet,” Kathy said. “Can’t afford to take chances, you know.”

The old man smiled. “I can afford to take chances,” he said.

Mrs. Corn came back into the living-room. “Baby’s in his crib,” she said, “and just about asleep already. Does he feel better now? I’ll bet he was just drunk or hungry or something.”

“Of course he was,” Kathy said, fired by the idea. “He was hungry. That’s what was wrong all the time, Jean. How silly we were. Poor old gentleman!” she said to the old man. “Mrs. Archer is certainly not going to let you leave here without a full meal inside of you.”

Mrs. Archer looked doubtful. “I have some eggs,” she said.

“Fine!” Kathy said. “Just the thing. They’re easily digested,” she said to the old man, “and especially good if you haven’t eaten for”—she hesitated—“for a while.”

“Black coffee,” Mrs. Corn said, “if you ask me. Look at his hands shake.”

“Nervous exhaustion,” Kathy said firmly. “A nice hot cup of bouillon is all he needs to be good as ever, and he has to drink it very slowly until his stomach gets used to food again. The stomach,” she told Mrs. Archer and Mrs. Corn, “shrinks when it remains empty for any great period of time.”

“I would rather not trouble you,” the old man said to Mrs. Archer.

“Nonsense,” Kathy said. “We’ve got to see that you get a good hot meal to go on with.” She took Mrs. Archer’s arm and began to walk her out to the kitchen. “Just some eggs,” she said. “Fry four or five. I’ll get you half a dozen later. I don’t suppose you have any bacon. I’ll tell you, fry up a few potatoes too. He won’t care if they’re half-raw. These people eat things like heaps of fried potatoes and eggs and—”

“There’s some canned figs left over from lunch,” Mrs. Archer said. “I was wondering what to do with them.”

“I’ve got to run back and keep an eye on him,” Kathy said. “He might faint again or something. You just fry up those eggs and potatoes. I’ll send Blanche out if she’ll come.”

Mrs. Archer measured out enough coffee for two cups and set the pot on the stove. Then she took out her frying pan. “Kathy,” she said, “I’m just a little worried. If he really is drunk, I mean, and if Jim should hear about it, with the baby here and everything….”

“Why, Jean!” Kathy said. “You should live in the country for a while, I guess. Women always give out meals to starving men. And you don’t need to tell Jim. Blanche and I certainly won’t say anything.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Archer, “you’re sure he isn’t drunk?”

“I know a starving man when I see one,” Kathy said. “When an old man like that can’t stand up and his hands shake and he looks so funny, that means he’s starving to death. Literally starving.”

“Oh, my!” said Mrs. Archer. She hurried to the cupboard under the sink and took out two potatoes. “Two enough, do you think? I guess we’re really doing a good deed.”

Kathy giggled. “Just a bunch of Girl Scouts,” she said. She started out of the kitchen, and then she stopped and turned around. “You have any pie? They always eat pie.”

“It was for dinner, though,” Mrs. Archer said.

“Oh, give it to him,” Kathy said. “We can run out and get some more after he goes.”

While the potatoes were frying, Mrs. Archer put a plate, a cup and saucer, and a knife and fork and spoon on the dinette table. Then, as an afterthought, she picked up the dishes and, taking a paper bag out of a cupboard, tore it in half and spread it smoothly on the table and put the dishes back. She got a glass and filled it with water from the bottle in the refrigerator, cut three slices of bread and put them on a plate, and then cut a small square of butter and put it on the plate with the bread. Then she got a paper napkin from the box in the cupboard and put it beside the plate, took it up after a minute to fold it into a triangular shape, and put it back. Finally she put the pepper and salt shakers on the table and got out a box of eggs. She went to the door and called, “Kathy! Ask him how does he want his eggs fried?”

There was a murmur of conversation in the living-room and Kathy called back, “Sunny side up!”

Mrs. Archer took out four eggs and then another and broke them one by one into the frying-pan. When they were done she called out, “All right, girls! Bring him in!”

Mrs. Corn came into the kitchen, inspected the plate of potatoes and eggs, and looked at Mrs. Archer without speaking. Then Kathy came, leading the old man by the arm. She escorted him to the table and sat him down in a chair. “There,” she said. “Now, Mrs. Archer’s fixed you a lovely hot meal.”

The old man looked at Mrs. Archer. “I’m very grateful,” he said.

“Isn’t that nice!” Kathy said. She nodded approvingly at Mrs. Archer. The old man regarded the plate of eggs and potatoes. “Now pitch right in,” Kathy said. “Sit down, girls. I’ll get a chair from the bedroom.”

The old man picked up the salt and shook it gently over the eggs. “This looks delicious,” he said finally.

“You just go right ahead and eat,” Kathy said, reappearing with a chair. “We want to see you get filled up. Pour him some coffee, Jean.”

Mrs. Archer went to the stove and took up the coffeepot.

“Please don’t bother,” he said.

“That’s all right,” Mrs. Archer said, filling the old man’s cup. She sat down at the table. The old man picked up the fork and then put it down again to take up the paper napkin and spread it carefully over his knees.

“What’s your name?” Kathy asked.

“O’Flaherty, Madam. John O’Flaherty.”

“Well, John,” Kathy said, “I am Miss Valentine and this lady is Mrs. Archer and the other one is Mrs. Corn.”

“How do you do?” the old man said.

“I gather you’re from the old country,” Kathy said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Irish, aren’t you?” Kathy said.

“I am, Madam.” The old man plunged the fork into one of the eggs and watched the yoke run out onto the plate. “I knew Yeats,” he said suddenly.

“Really?” Kathy said, leaning forward. “Let me see—he was the writer, wasn’t he?”

“‘Come out of charity, come dance with me in Ireland,’” the old man said. He rose and, holding on to the chair back, bowed solemnly to Mrs. Archer, “Thank you again, Madam, for your generosity.” He turned and started for the front door. The three women got up and followed him.

“But you didn’t finish,” Mrs. Corn said.

“The stomach,” the old man said, “as this lady has pointed out, shrinks. Yes, indeed,” he went on reminiscently, “I knew Yeats.”

At the front door he turned and said to Mrs. Archer, “Your kindness should not go unrewarded.” He gestured to the shoelaces lying on the floor. “These,” he said, “are for you. For your kindness. Divide them with the other ladies.”

“But I wouldn’t dream—” Mrs. Archer began.

“I insist,” the old man said, opening the door. “A small return, but all that I have to offer. Pick them up yourself,” he added abruptly. Then he turned and thumbed his nose at Mrs. Corn. “I hate old women,” he said.

“Well!” said Mrs. Corn faintly.

“I may have imbibed somewhat freely,” the old man said to Mrs. Archer, “but I never served bad sherry to my guests We are of two different worlds, Madam.”

“Didn’t I tell you?” Mrs. Corn was saying. “Haven’t I kept telling you all along?”

Mrs. Archer, her eyes on Kathy, made a tentative motion of pushing the old man through the door, but he forestalled her.

“‘Come dance with me in Ireland,’” he said. Supporting himself against the wall, he reached the outer door and opened it. “And time runs on,” he said.