Ragged Lady, Part 1

the carving room; she was not to wash dishes or to do any part of the chamber work, but to carry messages and orders for the landlady, and to save her steps, when she wished to see the head-wai

d her the Boss when he spoke of her to others in her hearing, and he addressed her as Boss when he feigned to find that it was not Mrs. Atwell. She did not mind that in him, and let the chef have his joke as if it were not one. But one day when the clerk called her Boss she merely looked at him without speak

d the message Mrs. Atwell had g

ny times a day to look at the register, or to ask for letters, should remain snubbed by a girl who still wore her hair in a

boxes, which formed a sort of little private room for him, and talked with him at such hours of the forenoon and the late evening as the student was off duty. He found comfort in the

education had ended at a commercial college, where he acquired a good knowledge of bookkeeping, and the fine business hand he wrote, but where it seemed to him sometimes that the earlier learning of the public school had been hermetic

awled sadly in his chair, and listening to the last dance playing in the distant parlor, Fane said. "Now, what'll you bet that they won't every on

study them," said

th your while, or know

sugge

w them at all,"

relevant, "that there's a girl in the house that

ascibly. "I don't w

t, you mean? Wel

ed the student. "But I've g

urged, "that it is natural for a man-w

pose i

n't conside

, wr

ost any of 'em," said the clerk, with an air of inductive reasoning. "Take that Claxon girl, now for example, I don't know what it is about her. She's good-looking, I don't deny that; and she's got pretty manners, and she's

aid the

that would. But she's not that kind. She ain't much more than a child, and ye

e student, wi

e right thing to do, every time, and yet I guess it's nature. You know how the chef always calls her the Boss? That explains it about as well as

aid Gregory. "You had no

gain it seemed to me that I came out with the word because it

ldn't b

he sweetness of his smile, "just as I would upon any other yo

and the clerk made a mi

g any sort of liberty with her. Now, would you apologize to her, if you was in m

disdainful laugh, and went out of the p

. Several of them fluttered up to the desk, as the clerk had foretold, and looked for letters in the boxes bearing their initials. They called him out, and asked if he had not forgotten something for them. He denied it with a sad, wise smile, and then

your pardon. I was

at's all right. Sit down a while, can't yo

anted to say I was sor

there anything

was just wonderin

O