Martie The Unconquered | Page 7

rubber stamps with energy and certainty, vigorously copy certain mysterious letters and numbers, toss the discarded books into a large basket at her elbow and then, for the first time, as she handed the selected books to the applicant, glance up with her smile and whispered "Good afternoon," was a real study in efficiency.
"I don't understand it," Martie smiled.
"Did you read it?" persisted the older woman.
"Well--not much." Martie had, in fact, hardly opened the book, an excellent collection of some twenty essays for girls under the general title "Choosing a Life Work."
"Listen. Why don't you study the Cutter system, and familiarize yourself a little with this work, and come in here with me?" asked Miss Fanny, in her firm, pushing voice.
"When?" Martie asked, considering.
"Well--I can't say when. I'm no oracle, my dear. But some day the grave and reverend seigneurs on my Board may give me an assistant, I suppose."
"Oh--I know--" Martie was vague again. "What would I get?"
Miss Fanny's harsh cheeks and jaw stiffened, her eyes half closed, as she bit her lip in thought.
"Fifteen, perhaps," she submitted.
Martie dallied with the pleasing thought of having fifteen dollars of her own each month.
"But can't Miss Fanny make you feel as if you were back in school?" she asked, when the girls were again in Main Street. "I'd just as lieves be in the lib'ary as anywheres," she added.
"I drather be in the box factory," Grace said. "More money."
"More work, too!" Martie suggested. "Come on, let's go to Bonestell's!"
Other persons of all ages were in the drug store, seated on stools at the high marble counter, or at the little square cherry tables in the dim room at the rear. Drugs were a lesser consideration than brushes, stationery, cameras, candy, cigars, post cards, gum, mirrors, celluloid bureau sets, flower seeds, and rubber toys and rattles, but large glass flagons of coloured waters duly held the corners of the show windows on the street, and dusty and fly-specked cards advertising patent medicines overlapped each other.
The three girls nodded to various acquaintances, and, as they slid on to seats at the counter, greeted the soda clerk familiarly. This was Reddy Johnson, a lean, red-headed youth in a rather dirty white jacket buttoned up to the chin. Reddy was assisted by a blear-eyed little Swedish girl of about sixteen, who rushed about blindly with her little blonde head hanging. He himself did not leave the counter, which he constantly mopped with a damp, mud-coloured rag. He plunged the streaked and sticky glasses into hot water, set them on a dripping grating to dry, turned on this faucet of sizzling soda, that of rich slow syrup, beat up the contents of glasses with his long-handled spoon, slipped them into tarnished nickelled frames, and slid them deftly before the waiting boys and girls. Hot sauce over this ice cream, nuts on that, lady fingers and whipped cream with the tall slender cups of chocolate for the Baxter girls, crackers with the tomato bouillon old Lady Snow was noisily sipping; Reddy never made a mistake.
Presently he, with a swift motion, set a little plate of sweet crackers before the girls. These were not ordinarily served with five-cent orders, and the three instantly divided them, concealing the little cakes in their hands, and handing the tell-tale plate back to the clerk. A wise precaution it proved, for a moment later "old Bones," as the proprietor of the establishment was nicknamed, sauntered through the store. In a gale of giggles the girls went out, stealthily eating the crackers as they went. This adventure was enough to put them in high spirits; Martie indeed was so easily fired to excitement that the crossing of wits with Dr. Ben, the personal word with Miss Fanny, and now Reddy's gallantry, had brightened her colour and carried her elation to the point of effervescence. Sparkling, chattering, flushed under her shabby summer hat, Martie sauntered between her friends straight to her golden hour.
Face to face they came with a tall, loosely built, well-dressed young man, with a straw hat on one side of his head. Such a phenomenon was almost unknown in the streets of Monroe, and keenly conscious of his presence, and instantly curious as to his identity, the girls could not pass him without a provocative glance. "Stunning!" said each girl in her heart. "Who on earth--?"
Suddenly he blocked their way.
"Hello, Sally! Hello, Martie! Too proud to speak to old friends?"
"Why--it's Rodney Parker!" Martie said in her rich young voice. "Hello, Rodney!"
All four shook hands and laughed joyously. To Rodney the circumstance, at the opening of his dull return home, was welcome; to the girls, nothing short of delight. He was so handsome, so friendly, and in the four years he had been at Stanford University and the summers he had spent