Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/197

 The sun was hot. His heels were sore with the jarring of the flagstone sidewalks. He went despondently back, through interminable and noisy streets, to the next address in his notes; and he was glad to sit in an outer office there, among a score of other applicants for the vacancy, until his turn should come to enter to the manager. Some of his rivals were as young as he, but dressed with a cheap smartness, their trousers turned up at the ankles stylishly, their collars high above "puff" ties that concealed the absence of a starched shirt-front. Some were older men pitiably meek and patient in their expressions and their attitudes, neat with the neatness of poverty that tries to maintain a good appearance in clothes brushed threadbare. Some were stolid youths, in bagged and wrinkled trousers, in shoes wore down at the heel, frankly poor and indifferent to it. One was a consumptive with an echoing cough which he tried to cover, mechanically, behind the long fingers of his clerk's hand, his eyes fixed on the blank wall that faced him, apparently unconscious of the hollow uproar which burst from him with an irritating frequency on the silence.

The manager appeared suddenly at the door, over the shoulders of a rejected applicant, and announced with exasperation: "Now, there's no use your waiting here if you haven't had experience. We want an experienced man. I told you that before. And you must have references. I'll not take anyone without good references."

Don took up his hat and withdrew apologetically.