"Miss Robson, of course you've heard all about the rumpus," Mr. Flint was saying. "I had to fire Miss Whitehead. … I think you can fill the bill."
Claire rose without replying. Mr. Flint left his seat and crossed over to her.
"I hope," he said, flicking a thread from her shoulder, "that you're game. … Some girls, of course, don't care a damn about getting on … especially if there's a Johnny somewhere in sight with enough cash in his pocket for a marriage license."
"I am very much taken by surprise," Claire faltered. "You see, the change means a great deal to me."
Mr. Flint moved closer. His manner was intimate and distasteful. "Sometimes I think we business men ought to get more of a slant on our employees. … You know what I mean, not exactly bothering about how many lumps of sugar they take in their coffee, or their taste in after-dinner cheese … but, well, just how often they have to resole their boots and turn the ribbons on their spring bonnets. … Now, in Miss Whitehead's case. … But of course you're not interested in Miss Whitehead."
"Why, I wouldn't say that," stammered Claire. Then, as she reached for her shorthand book she said, more confidently: "To be quite frank, Mr. Flint, I liked Miss Whitehead tremendously. She was so alive … and vivid."
Flint beamed. "Do you know why I picked you instead of that Munch dame? … It's because you had all the frills of a woman and none of the nastiness. For instance, you wouldn't be bothered in the least if I took a notion to overload the office with another pretty girl. … I've watched you for some time. It has taken me six months to make up my mind to fire Miss Whitehead and boost you into her job."
He stood with an air of condescending arrogance, his thumbs bearing down heavily on his trousers pockets, his broad fingers beating a self-satisfied tattoo upon his thighs. Claire shrank nearer the table. "You mean, Mr. Flint, that you dismissed Miss Whitehead merely to give me her position?"
Flint smiled. "Well, now you're coming down to brass-headed tacks. I'm not keen on spelling out the whys and wherefores of anything I do. … But one thing is certain enough—if Miss Munch had been the only available candidate I could have stood Miss Whitehead. … There ain't much question about that."
"Oh, Mr. Flint! I'm sorry!"
He gave a wide guffaw. "That only makes you all the more of a corker!" he answered, rubbing his hands together in narrow-eyed satisfaction.
She escaped into the outer office, flushed, but with her head thrown back in an attitude of instinctive defense, and the next instant she literally ran into the arm of a man.
"Why, Miss Robson, but this is pleasant! I'm just dropping in to see Mr. Flint."
She drew back. Mr. Stillman stood smiling before her.
Greetings and questions flowed with all the genial ease of one who is never quite taken unawares. Claire, outwardly calm, felt overcome with inner confusion. She passed rapidly to her desk and sat down.
Miss Munch was upon her almost instantly.
"Do you know Ned Stillman?" Miss Munch asked, veiling her real purpose.
"Yes," replied Claire, with uncomfortable brevity.
"I have a cousin who was housekeeper for his wife's father. … You know about his wife, of course."
Claire lifted her clear eyes in a startled glance that was almost as instantly converted into a look of challenge.
"Yes," she lied.
Miss Munch hesitated, then plunged at once into the issue uppermost in her mind. "It's too bad you've had to be bothered with Flint's dictation, Miss Robson. It just happens I'm writing up a long home-office report, otherwise I'm sure he wouldn't have annoyed you."
Claire Robson fixed Miss Munch with a coldly polite stare. "You've made a mistake, Miss Munch. Mr. Flint has given me no dictation." The speech in itself was nothing, but Claire's tone gave it unmistakable point. Miss Munch grew white and then flushed. She turned away without a word, but Claire Robson knew that in a twinkling of an eye she had gained not only an enemy, but an uncommon one.
That night Claire took an unusually long way round on her walk home. Her path from the Falcon Insurance Company's office on California Street to the Clay Street flat was never a direct one, first, because there were hills to be avoided, and, second, because Claire found the streets at twilight too full of charm for a rapid homeward flight. The year was on the wane and the November days were coming to an early blackness. Claire reveled in the light-flooded dusk of these late autumn evenings. To her, the city became a vast theater, darkened suddenly for the purpose of throwing the performers into sharper relief. Most clerks made their way up Montgomery Street toward Market, but Claire climbed past the German Bank to Kearny Street. She liked this old thoroughfare, struggling vainly to pull itself up to its former glory. The Kearny Street crowd was a varying quantity, frankly shabby or flashily prosperous, as far south as Sutter Street, suddenly dignified and reserved for the two blocks beyond. To-night Claire missed the direct appeal of the streets lined with bright shops. They formed the proper background for her broodings, but they scarcely entered into her mood. She could not have said just what flight her mood was taking, or upon just which branch her thought would alight. She was confused and puzzled and vaguely uneasy. She had a sense that somehow, somewhere, a door had been opened and that a strong, devastating wind was clearing the air and bringing dead things to ground in a disorderly shower. She was stirred by twilights of uneasiness. It was almost as if the monotonous truce of noonday had been darkened by a huge, composite, masculine shadow, made up in some mysterious way of the ridiculous Serbian and his blood-red dawn, and this man Stillman, who had a wife, and Flint, with hands so ready to flick threads from her sloping shoulders. Yesterday her outlook had been peaceful and unhappy; to-day she felt stimulation of an impending struggle. She was afraid, and yet she would not have turned back for one swift moment. And suddenly the words of Mrs. Finnegan recurred, "I guess we women are all alike." Were they?
At which point she came upon a pastry-shop window and she went in and bought a half-dozen French pastries. The thought of her mother's pleasure at this unusual treat brought her in due time smiling to her threshold.
Mrs. Robson was not in her accustomed place at the head of the stairs; about half-way up the long flight her voice sounded triumphantly:
"Oh, Claire, do hurry and see what Gertrude has sent! Everything is perfectly lovely."
Claire quickened her pace and gained the cramped living-room. Thrown about in a sort of joyous disorder, Gertrude Sinclair's finery quite lit up the shabbiness. Hats, plumes, scraps of vivid silks, gilded slippers, a spangled fan—their unrelated vividness struck Claire as fantastic as a futurist painting. Her mother seemed suddenly young again. Claire wondered whether, after the toll of sixty-odd years, she could be moved to momentary youth by the mere sight of the prettiness that was quickening her mother's pulse.
Mrs. Robson held up a filmy evening gown of black net embroidered with a rich design of dull gold. "Isn't this heavenly?" she demanded. "And it will just fit you, Claire. I think Gertrude has spread herself this time."
"Yes, on finery, mother. But didn't she send anything sensible? What possessed her to load us up with a lot of things we can never possibly get a chance to wear?"
Claire had not meant to be disagreeable, but there was rancor in her voice. Mrs. Robson cast aside the dress with the carelessness of a spoiled favorite; she always adapted her manner to the tone of her background.
"Claire Robson!" she cried, good-naturedly. "You're a regular old woman! I'm sure I haven't much to be cheerful about, but I just won't let anything down me! … If I wanted to, I could give up right now. Where would we have been, I'd like to know, if I hadn't held my head up? Goodness knows, my folks