t.

Maybe there's some hot ones down around Broad-st. that drives to
business in cabs and pounds the keys durin' office hours; but for a
genuine, mercerized near silk we stand ready to back Mildred against the
field. She'd have an expert guessin', Mildred would. "Miss Morgan" is
the way she figures on the payroll; but that never sounded rich enough
for me.

It was the first week I was there that I begun to get a line on Mildred.
One day the old man calls me in and hands me a letter that's been put on
his desk for him to sign. He was plum color, Old Hickory was, so mad he
could have chewed a file.

"Boy," says he, "take this into the main office, find out who M. M. is,
and bring her in here. Anybody that can spell in that fashion I want to
take a good look at."

Think of the shock I gets when Piddie tells me them letters stand for
Mildred Morgan.

"Lady," says I, "I hates to say it, but the boss is waitin' to hand out
a call-down to you. Don't you go to gettin' scared stiff, though; for the
first cussword he lets go of I'll chuck a chair at him."

The smile I gets for that would have been worth half a dozen jobs. I was
lookin' for her to go white and begin bitin' her upper lip, like they
usually does; but she ain't that kind--not on your nameplate! She just
peels off the sleeve protectors, sets her side combs in firm, gives her
face a dab or so with the rabbit's foot, and starts along after me, with
that new antelope walk of hers, as easy and pleased as if she'd been
asked to come to the front and pour tea.

And she's got the costume the part calls for, mind you! They're the only
clothes of the kind I ever see wore into this buildin'. I couldn't say
what they was made of; but I know they're the button-up-the-back style,
and that they stick to her as if they'd been put on by a paper-hanger. I
guess you'd call Mildred a 1911 model. Anyway, she seems to bulge in the
right places; though how anyone so long-waisted as that can get
themselves into such a rig without callin' for help is somethin' I
passes up.

Well, I tows her into the boss's office, feelin' as mean as a welsher.
The old man has settled back in his chair, a cigar pointin' out of one
corner of his mouth, and a letter in one fist. While I'm gone he's run
across another, worse than the first, by the marks he's made on it, and
he's got to the point where a thermometer slipped down the back of his
neck would go off like a cap pistol.

"See here!" says he