New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Women white collar workers -- Fiction
Sweet to her--even when he told her that he was engaged, even when it
was evident that he regarded her as an older sister or as a very young
and understanding aunt--was Sanford Hunt's liking. "Why do you like
me--if you do?" she demanded one lunch-hour, when he had brought her a
bar of milk-chocolate.
"Oh, I dun'no'; you're so darn honest, and you got so much more sense
than this bunch of Bronx totties. Gee! they'll make bum stenogs. I know.
I've worked in an office. They'll keep their gum and a looking-glass in
the upper right-hand drawer of their typewriter desks, and the old man
will call them down eleventy times a day, and they'll marry the
shipping-clerk first time he sneaks out from behind a box. But you got
sense, and somehow--gee! I never know how to express things--glad I'm
taking this English composition stuff--oh, you just seem to understand a
guy. I never liked that Yid Weintraub till you made me see how darn
clever and nice he really is, even if he does wear spats."
Sanford told her often that he wished she was going to come over to the
Lowry Paint Company to work, when she finished. He had entered the
college before her; he would be through somewhat earlier; he was going
back to the paint company and would try to find an opening for her
there. He wanted her to meet Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz, the Manhattan
salesman of the company.
When Mr. Schwirtz was in that part of town, interviewing the
department-store buyers, he called up Sanford Hunt, and Sanford insisted
that she come out to lunch with Schwirtz and himself and his girl. She
went shyly.
Sanford's sweetheart proved to be as clean and sweet as himself, but
mute, smiling instead of speaking, inclined to admire every one, without
much discrimination. Sanford was very proud, very eager as host, and his
boyish admiration of all his guests gave a certain charm to the corner
of the crude German sausage-and-schnitzel restaurant where they lunched.
Una worked at making the party as successful as possible, and was
cordial to Mr. Julius Edward Schwirtz, the paint salesman.
Mr. Schwirtz was forty or forty-one, a red-faced, clipped-mustached,
derby-hatted average citizen. He was ungrammatical and jocose; he panted
a good deal and gurgled his soup; his nails were ragged-edged, his
stupid brown tie uneven, and there were signs of a growing grossness and
fatty unwieldiness about his neck, his shoulders, his waist. But he was
affable. He quietly helped Sanford in ordering lunch, to the great
economy of embarrassment. He was smilingly ready to explain to Una how a
paint company office was run; what chances there were for a girl. He
seemed to know his business, he didn't gossip, and his heavy,
coarse-lipped smile was almost sweet when he said to Una, "Makes a
hard-cased old widower like me pretty lonely to see this nice kid and
girly here. Eh? Wish I had some children like them myself."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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