Broken to the Plow Part 7

She paused to give him a chance to put in a word, but he sat silent.

It was plain that he didn't intend to help out her growing embarra.s.sment.

"It's all come out of a clear sky," she went on, trailing the fringe of her beaded hand bag across her shoe tops. "He only told me last night... There isn't any use pretending ... he hasn't any capital to work on. And until the premiums begin to come in there'll be office rent and a stenographer's salary piling up ... and our living expenses in the bargain... A friend of his is putting up some money, but I can't imagine it's a whole lot... I'm a little bit upset about it, of course. I wish I could really do something to help him."

She knew from his look that he intended to hurl another disconcerting question at her.

"Well, if you want to help him, why don't you?" he quizzed.

"Why, I ... why, I'm not fit for anything, really," she tried to throw back.

"My wife said you were pretty efficient at the Red Cross."

"Oh, but that was different!"

"Why?"

"Well, I can't just explain, but it's easy to do something you ...

you..."

"Feel you don't have to," he finished for her, ironically.

She shrugged petulantly. "What do you want me to do? Solicit insurance?"

He smiled. "That's what you're doing now, isn't it?"

"Mr. _Hilmer_!" She rose majestically in her seat.

He continued to sit, but she was conscious that his eyes were sweeping her from head to foot with frank appraisal.

"A pretty woman has a good chance to get by with almost anything she sets her mind on," he said, finally.

She drew in a barely perceptible breath. The blunt tip of his shoe was jammed squarely against her toe. She withdrew her foot, but she sat down again.

"I really ought to be angry with you, Mr. Hilmer," she purred at him, archly. "It's very nice of you to attempt to be so gallant, but, after all, talk _is_ pretty cheap, isn't it?... So far I don't seem to be making good as a solicitor. So what else is there left?"

"How about being your husband's stenographer?" he asked, without a trace of banter.

She forgot to be amazed. "I don't know anything about shorthand," she replied, simply.

"Well, you could soon learn to run a typewriter," he insisted. "I have a young woman in my office who takes my letters direct on the machine as I dictate them. She's as good as, if not better than, my chief stenographer. That would save your husband at least seventy-five dollars a month."

She had an impulse to rise and sweep haughtily out of the room. What right had this man to tell her what she could or could not do? The impudence of him! But she didn't want to appear absurd. She leaned back and looked at him through her half-closed eyelids as she said, with a slight drawl:

"Would my presence in the office be a bid for your support, Mr.

Hilmer?"

"It might," he said, looking at her keenly.

She did not flinch, but his steady gaze cut her composure like a knife. She got to her feet again.

"What silly little flowers!" escaped her, as she took a step near his desk and pulled a faded blossom from the blue vase.

He left his seat and stood beside her. "I got them down by St. Francis Wood last Sunday," he admitted. "They reminded me of the early spring blossoms in the old country ... the sort that shoot up almost at the melting snow bank's edge... The flowers here are very gorgeous, but somehow they never seem as sweet."

She looked at him curiously, almost with the expectation of finding that he was jesting. This flowering of sentiment was unexpected. It had come, as he had described his native spring blooms, almost at the snow bank's edge. She reached out, gathered up the faded blossoms ruthlessly, and dropped them into a convenient waste basket.

"Do you mind?" she asked, lifting her eyes heavily.

He did not answer.

Slowly she unpinned the flaming daffodils from her side and slipped them into the empty vase. She stepped back to survey their sunlit brilliance, resting a gloved hand upon the chair she had deserted. She was conscious that another hand was bearing down heavily upon her slender ringers. The weight crushed and pained her, yet she felt no desire to withdraw...

The office boy came in. She moved forward quickly.

"There's a gentleman named Starratt waiting to see you," he announced.

She threw back her head defensively.

"This way!" Hilmer said, as he opened a private exit for her.

She found herself in the marble-flanked hallway and presently she gained the sun-flooded street. The blood was pounding at her temples and its throb hurt.

She walked home rapidly, swept by half-formulated impulses that stirred her to almost adolescent self-revelations, yet when she reached her apartment she was quite calm, almost too calm, and outwardly cold.

That night over the black coffee Fred Starratt said to his wife, with an air of restrained triumph:

"Well, I landed the insurance on Hilmer's car to-day."

She flashed him, an enigmatical smile. "Oh, lovely!"...

He sipped his coffee with preening satisfaction.

"Everything is going beautifully," he continued. "I hired an office and began to connect up with two or three firms. That preliminary from Hilmer was a great boost... A man named Kendrick handles all his business, so I've sort of got the street guessing. They can't figure how I could even get a look in... Of course I'm convinced that Kendrick shares his commissions with Hilmer, which is against the rules of the Broker's Exchange. But he didn't ask for any shakedown...

Brauer and I ordered some office furniture, and to-morrow I'll advertise for a girl."

"I've got one for you already," she said, deliberately.

"Who?"

She reached across the shallow length of the table and touched his arm significantly.

"I've decided to do it myself," she purred.

He patted her hand as an incredulous stare escaped him. "You!" he laughed.

She suffered his indulgent and mildly contemptuous caress. "Don't laugh, sonny," she drawled, almost disagreeably. "Your wife may prove a lot more clever than she seems."