with--"

"No--no--no! Don't you remember me now?"

She tore her hat backward from its carefully adjusted tilt, so that it
revealed the brassy gold of her hair, and took a step toward him.

"_Now_ don't you remember?"

"Sure--sure--you're the little girl from--sure I'd remember a big little
girl like you anywhere."

"You remember now? On the twenty-eight-hour accommodation out of St.
Louis. We--I got on at Terre Haute and sat across from you while
he--they made up the berth, and you said--"

"Could I forget a big little queen like you! You've grown to a real big
girl, ain't you? Come back in my office, sister. That's how much I think
of you--with a whole company waitin' for me over at the Gotham
Theater--come in!"

"I--just got here--Mr.--Mr.--"

"Myers, if anybody should ask you. That's who you're dealin' with--Hy
Myers, if you should happen to forget."

"Ain't it funny, Mr. Myers, my runnin' into you right off. I never
thought I'd find you in this town. My little sister I was tellin' you
about will be here soon and--"

"This way!"

"I'm ready to take that job you was tellin' me about till--"

"In here, sister, where we can talk business alone."

She followed him back through the glazed door, through an outer office
arranged like a school-room with aisle-forming desks, and
white-shirt-waisted girls and men clerks with green eye-shades bent
double over typewriters and books as big as the marble tablets on which
are writ the debit and credit of all men for all time.

Boys scurried and darted; telephone bells jangled; and finally the
quiet of an inner office, shut off from the noises like a padded cell,
almost entirely carpeted in a leopard's skin and hung with colored
lithographs of many season's comedy queens, whose dynasties were sprung
from caprice and whose papier-mache thrones had long since slumped to
pulp.

"Now sit here, sister--here in this chair next to my desk, where I can
look at you. Gad, ain't you grown to be a big girl, though!"

"I'm ready for that job now, Mr.--Mr. Myers."

"Well--well--well!"

Mr. Myers swung on his swivel-chair, squinted his eyes further back into
his head, and nodded further appraisal and approval.

"Big little girl--can I call you that, Queenie? How have you been?"

"I've had a hard time of it, Mr.--"

"Hold out your hand and lemme tell your fortune, sister."

"Quit!"

"Dear child--you mustn't act like that--here--hold out your--"

"Quit!"

"Come now-