"This way!"

"I'm ready to take that job you was tellin' me about till--"

"In here, sister, where we can talk business alone."

She followed him back through the glazed door, through an outer office arranged like a school-room with aisle-forming desks, and white-shirt-waisted girls and men clerks with green eye-shades bent double over typewriters and books as big as the marble tablets on which are writ the debit and credit of all men for all time.

Boys scurried and darted; telephone bells jangled; and finally the quiet of an inner office, shut off from the noises like a padded cell, almost entirely carpeted in a leopard's skin and hung with colored lithographs of many season's comedy queens, whose dynasties were sprung from caprice and whose papier-mache thrones had long since slumped to pulp.

"Now sit here, sister--here in this chair next to my desk, where I can look at you. Gad, ain't you grown to be a big girl, though!"

"I'm ready for that job now, Mr.--Mr. Myers."

"Well--well--well!"

Mr. Myers swung on his swivel-chair, squinted his eyes further back into his head, and nodded further appraisal and approval.

"Big little girl--can I call you that, Queenie? How have you been?"

"I've had a hard time of it, Mr.--"

"Hold out your hand and lemme tell your fortune, sister."

"Quit!"

"Dear child--you mustn't act like that--here--hold out your--"

"Quit!"

"Come now--"

"We want jobs, me and my little sister--when she gets here. I told you about her, you remember. I--I've had experience on Western--"

"Naughty--naughty eyes--devilish eyes! Don't you look at me like that--don't! You big little devil, you!"

"What is it, sir?"

"Good! Sit there with the sun on you--you've got hair like--"

"I've had experience with first-row--"

"Gad!" He swerved suddenly forward in his chair so that his small feet touched the floor. "Gad, stand up there--stand over there in that sunshine by the window!"

"What--"

"Stand up--there, agin that screen there--"

Dark as a nun in her wimple, but golden as a sun-flower, she rose as Trilby rose to the eye of Svengali--

"Gad!" he repeated, bringing his small tight fist down on a littered ash-tray, "by Gad!"

Wine was suddenly in her blood.

"You ought to see me and my little sister when we pose together; we--"

"Take off your hat, girl."

She stood suddenly quiet, as if the wine in her blood had seethed and quieted.

"Aw--no--whatta you think I am--I--"

"Take off your hat, big little girl, and if you're good to me I'll tell you something. If I hadn't taken a fancy to you I wouldn't tell you, neither."

She lifted the heavy brim with both hands and stood in the bar of sunlight.

"Gad!" he cried--"Gad!" and jerked open a drawer and threw the big bulk of a typewritten ma.n.u.script on the desk before him. "Read that; read that, sister!" His heavy spatulate finger underlined the caption.

"'The--Red--Widow,' 'The Red Widow,' by Al Wilson."

He rose and jerked her by her two wrists so that she flounced toward him, her hair awry and the breath jumping out of her bosom.

"That's _you_, sister--the Red Widow!"

"The Red--Widow?"

"You're goin' out in a road chorus next week and get broke in. At the end of a season I'm goin' to feature you in the biggest show that ever I had up my sleeve."

She regarded him with glazed eyes of one dazed, and backed away from him.

"Me!"

"You--the Red Widow, sister! You know what a Hy Myers production means, don't you? You know what an Al Wilson show is, don't you? Add them two.

I'll make you make that show or bust. Stand off there and lemme look at you again--there--so!"

"Quit!"

She sprang back from his touch and raised her hand with the glove dangling in the att.i.tude of a horseman cracking his whip. "You--you quit!" Like Dryope changed into a tree, with the woodiness creeping up her limbs and the glove in her pa.s.sive hand, she stood with her arm flung upward. "You quit!"

"Dear child, you mustn't--"

"I--I'm goin'--lemme go!"

"Aw, come now, sister; don't get frisky--I didn't mean to make you sore.

Gee! Ain't you a touchy little devil?"

"I'm goin'."

"If that's your number, all righty--but you're just kiddin'--you ain't goin' to be too independent in one of the worst seasons in the business."