Not that Pearlie would ever have
allowed them to. But she never had had to reprove them. During
pauses in dictation she had a way of peering near-sightedly, over
her glasses at the dapper, well-dressed traveling salesman who was
rolling off the items on his sale bill. That is a trick which
would make the prettiest kind of a girl look owlish.
On the night that Sam Miller strolled up to talk to her,
Pearlie was working late. She had promised to get out a long and
intricate bill for Max Baum, who travels for Kuhn and Klingman, so
that he might take the nine o'clock evening train. The
irrepressible Max had departed with much eclat and clatter, and
Pearlie was preparing to go home when Sam approached her.
Sam had just come in from the Gayety Theater across the
street, whither he had gone in a vain search for amusement after
supper. He had come away in disgust. A soiled soubrette with
orange-colored hair and baby socks had swept her practiced eye over
the audience, and, attracted by Sam's good-looking blond head in
the second row, had selected him as the target of her song. She
had run up to the extreme edge of the footlights at the risk of
teetering over, and had informed Sam through the medium of song--to
the huge delight of the audience, and to Sam's red-faced
discomfiture--that she liked his smile, and he was just her style,
and just as cute as he could be, and just the boy for her.
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