"Do you think he will come to-day?"
"Far be it from me to say."
"But I wish to see him."
"Many a blond has twirled his thumbs around here for weeks for the same
reason."
"But I am only in New York for a little while."
"I should worry," said she, opening her typewriter desk. "Give me your
play. I'll see that it gets to him."
"I'd rather talk to him myself."
"Suit yourself."
"I suppose I can wait here?"
"No charge for chairs," said the cheerful one.
An hour passed, broken only by the click of the typewriter. Conventional
overtures from the cheerful one being discouraged, she smashed the keys
in sulky silence. From eleven to twelve things were considerably
enlivened. Many sleek youths, of a type he had seen on Broadway,
arrived. They saluted the cheerful one gayly as "Sally" and indulged in
varying degrees of witty persiflage before the inevitable "The
Governor in?"
"Nope."
"Expect him to-day?"
"I dunno."
"Billy here?"
"Dunno."
"Thank you, little one."
Sometimes they departed, sometimes they joined Jarvis's waiting party.
Lovely ladies, and some not so lovely. Old and young, fat and thin, they
climbed the many stairs and met their disappointment cheerfully. They
usually fell upon Jack, or Billy, or Jim, of the waiters, who, in turn,
fell upon Belle, or Susan, or Fay.
"What are you with? How's business?" were always the first questions,
followed by shop talk, unintelligible to Jarvis. One youth said that he
had been to this office ten successive mornings without getting an
appointment. The others laughed, and one woman boasted that she had the
record, for she had gone twenty-eight times before she saw Frohman, the
last engagement she sought.
"But he engaged me the 29th," she laughed.
They impressed Jarvis as the lightest-hearted set he had ever
encountered. They laughed over everything and nothing. By one o'clock
Jarvis and the cheerful one were again in sole possession.
"Don't you ever eat?" she asked him.
"Oh, is it lunch time?" he inquired.
"Come out of the trance."
She went through the entire performance before the mirror, in putting on
her hat.
"Shall I bring you anything, dearie?" she asked him, as she completed
her toilette.
"I'm going, too," he said. "I'll be back."
He plunged down the stairs. When he reached the street he thought of
Bambi's face when he returned with the announcement of his futile
morning. He went into a shop, telephoned the club that he had been
detained and would not be back to lunch. Then he foraged for food and
went back to his sitting on the top floor of the Belasco.
"Well, little stranger," said the cheerful one, on her return.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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