Page:The Blacker the Berry - Thurman - 1929.djvu/97

 The voice with the smile wins. Emma Lou was encouraged.

“I would like stenographic work.”

“Experienced?”

“Yes.” It was so much easier to say than “no.”

“Good.”

Emma Lou held tightly to her under-arm bag.

“We have something that would just about suit you. Just a minute, and I’ll let you see Mrs. Blake.”

The chair squeaked and was eased of its burden. Emma Lou thought she heard a telephone ringing somewhere in the distance, or perhaps it was the clang of the street car that had just passed, heading for Seventh Avenue. The people in the room began talking again.

“Dat last job.” “Boy, she was dressed right down to the bricks.”

“And I told him” “Yeah, we went to see ‘Flesh and the Devil’.” “Some parteee.” “I just been here a week.”

Emma Lou’s mind became jumbled with incoherent wisps of thought. Her left foot beat a nervous tattoo upon a sagging floor board. The door opened. The gray-haired lady with the smile in her voice beckoned, and Emma Lou walked into the private office of Mrs. Blake.

Four people in the room. The only window facing