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“Mr. Gerrard took it back to make modifications. He gave it to me at noon on Saturday, just before the office closed. I will have it ready for you to-morrow morning, Mr. O’Mally, if you have not too many letters for me this afternoon,” Ardessa replied pointedly.

“Holy Mike!” muttered O’Mally, “we need a traffic policeman for the staff, too. Gerrard’s modified that thing half a dozen times already. Why don’t they get accurate information in the first place?”

He began to dictate his morning mail, walking briskly up and down the floor by way of giving his stenographer an energetic example. Her indolence and her ladylike deportment weighed on him. He wanted to take her by the elbows and run her around the block. He didn’t mind that she loafed when he was away, but it was becoming harder and harder to speed her up when he was on the spot. He knew his correspondence was not enough to keep her busy, so when he was in town he made her type his own breezy editorials and various articles by members of his staff.

Transcribing editorial copy is always laborious, and the only way to make it easy is to farm it out. This Ardessa was usually clever enough to do. When she returned to her own room after O’Mally had gone out to lunch, Ardessa rang for an office boy and said languidly, “James, call Becky, please.”

In a moment a thin, tense-faced Hebrew girl of eighteen or nineteen came rushing in, carrying a wire basket full of typewritten sheets. She was as gaunt as a plucked spring chicken, and her cheap, gaudy clothes might have been thrown on her. She looked as if she were running to catch a train and in mortal dread of missing it. While Miss Devine examined the pages in the basket, Becky stood with her shoulders drawn up and her elbows drawn in, apparently trying to hide herself in her insufficient open-work waist. Her wild, black eyes followed Miss Devine’s hands desperately. Ardessa sighed.

“This seems to be very smeary copy again, Becky. You don’t keep your mind on your work, and so you have to erase continually.”

Becky spoke up in wailing self-vindication.

“It ain’t that, Miss Devine. It’s so many hard words he uses that I have to be at the dictionary all the time. Look! Look!” She produced a bunch of manuscript faintly scrawled in pencil, and thrust it under Ardessa’s eyes. “He don’t write out the words at all. He just begins a word, and then makes waves for you to guess.”

“I see you haven’t always guessed correctly, Becky,” said Ardessa, with a weary smile. “There are a great many words here that would surprise Mr. Gerrard, I am afraid.”

“And the inserts,” Becky persisted. “How is anybody to tell where they go, Miss Devine? It’s mostly inserts; see, all over the top and sides and back.”

Ardessa turned her head away.

“Don’t claw the pages like that, Becky. You make me nervous. Mr. Gerrard has not time to dot his i’s and cross his t’s. That is what we keep copyists for. I will correct these sheets for you,–it would be terrible if Mr. O’Mally saw them,–and then you can copy them over again. It must be done by to-morrow morning, so you may have to work late. See that your hands are clean and dry, and then you will not smear it.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, Miss Devine. Will you tell the janitor, please, it’s all right if I have to stay? He was cross because I was here Saturday afternoon doing this. He said it was a holiday, and when everybody else was gone I ought to–“

“That will do, Becky. Yes, I will speak to the janitor for you. You may go to lunch now.”

Becky turned on one heel and then swung back.

“Miss Devine,” she said anxiously, “will it be all right if I get white shoes for now?”