s her mouth.' ...Mercy,
look at the orchids! Well, you must have had a swell time. I'll bet you
wouldn't like to tell who sent them.... There wasn't any card? That's
not saying you don't know, Miss Claire.... I hope you won't think I'm a
meddler, but I'm an older woman and.... Well, just you keep a sharp eye
on the feller that sends you orchids, Miss Claire."

She went down-stairs without further ado. Claire put the orchids in
water and set them on a sill near an open window. She did not feel in
the least resentful of Mrs. Finnegan's warnings. She was too confident
to be anything but faintly amused at her neighbor's middle-class
anxiety. But Finnegan's skepticism concerning Mrs. Condor annoyed her
and she remembered the disagreeable words of her aunt:

"_Hired_ you? How extraordinary!"

* * * * *

"Two o'clock _sharp_!" The memory of Stillman's air of delicate banter
as he emphasized the hour for beginning his business venture struck
Claire ironically the more she pondered his words. She had a feeling
that there was something farcical in the prospect, and yet there seemed
nothing to do but to go through with the preliminaries. She presented
herself, therefore, at the appointed time at the Stanford Court
apartments.

She found Stillman quite alone, his hands blue-black with the smudge
from a refractory typewriter ribbon which he was vainly endeavoring to
adjust. It took some time for him to get his hands clean again, and
Claire sharpened her pencils while she waited. But there really proved
to be nothing to do.

"I'm all up in the air over this bean business," Stillman confessed,
nonchalantly. "The government, you know ... they're taking over all that
sort of thing ... regulating food and prices. Of course, in that
case...."

Claire felt an enormous and illogical relief. "Then you really won't
need me," she ventured.

"Oh, quite the contrary.... I have a certain amount of business, of a
sort. And I'm tired of dropping checks along the trail of public
stenographers.... Suppose we talk terms. We haven't fixed on any salary,
yet."

Claire felt a rising impatience. His subterfuge seemed too childish and
obvious. "That will depend on how much of my time you expect, Mr.
Stillman."

"Well, three times a week, anyway ... to start with. Say Mondays,
Wednesdays, and Fridays from two to five.... I was thinking that
something in the neighborhood of fifteen dollars a week would be fair."