• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He was often aware, sitting at his desk, with Anna before him, notebook in hand, that while he read his letters her eyes were on him. More than once he met them, and there was something in them that healed his wounded vanity. He was a man to her. He was indeed almost a god, but that he did not know. In his present frame of mind, he would have accepted even that, however.

Then, one day he kissed her. She was standing very close, and the impulse was quick and irresistible. She made no effort to leave his arms, and he kissed her again.

"Like me a little, do you?" he had asked, smiling into her eyes.

"Oh, I do, I do!" she had replied, hoarsely.

It was almost an exact reversal of his relationship with Marion. There the huskiness was his, the triumphant smile was Marion's. And the feeling of being adored without stint or reservation warmed him.

He released her then, but their relationship had taken on a new phase. He would stand against the outer door, to prevent its sudden opening. And she would walk toward him, frightened and helpless until his arms closed about her. It was entirely a game to him. There were days, when Marion was trying, or the work of his department was nagging him, when he scarcely noticed her at all. But again the mischief in him, the idler, the newly awakened hunting male, took him to her with arms outheld and the look of triumph in his eyes that she mistook for love.

On one such occasion Joey came near to surprising a situation, so near that his sophisticated young mind guessed rather more than the truth. He went out, whistling.

He waited until Graham had joined the office force in the mill lunchroom, and invented an errand back to Graham's office. Anna was there, powdering her nose with the aid of a mirror fastened inside her purse.

Joey had adopted Clayton with a sort of fierce passion, hidden behind a pose of patronage.

"He's all right," he would say to the boys gathered at noon in the mill yard. "He's kinda short-tempered sometimes, but me, I understand him. And there ain't many of these here money kings that would sit up in a hospital the way he did with me."

The mill yard had had quite enough of that night in the hospital. It would fall on him in one of those half-playful, half-vicious attacks that are the humor of the street, and sometimes it was rather a battered Joey who returned to Clayton's handsome office, to assist him in running the mill.

But it was a very cool and slightly scornful Joey who confronted Anna that noon hour. He lost no time in preliminaries.

"What do you think you're doing, anyhow?" he demanded.

"Powdering my nose, if you insist on knowing."

They spoke the same language. Anna knew what was coming, and was on guard instantly.

"You cut it out, that's all."

"You cut out of this office. And that's all."

Joey sat down on Graham's desk and folded his arms.

"What are you going to get out of it, anyhow?" he said with a shift from bullying to argument.

"Out of what?"

"You know, all right."

She whirled on him.

"Now see here, Joey," she said. "You run out and play. I'll not have any little boys meddling in my affairs."

Joey slid off the desk and surveyed her with an impish smile. "Your affairs!" he repeated. "What the hell do I care about your affairs? I'm thinking of the boss. It's up to him if he wants to keep German spies on the place. But it's up to some of us here to keep our eyes open, so that they don't do any harm."

Sheer outrage made Anna's face pale. She had known for some time that the other girls kept away from her, and she had accepted it with the stolidity of her blood. She had no German sympathies; her sympathies in the war lay nowhere.

But - she a spy!

"You get out of here," she said furiously, "or I'll go to Mr. Spencer and complain about you. I'm no more a spy than you are. Not as much! - the way you come sneaking around listening and watching! Now you get out."

And Joey had gone, slowly to show that the going was of his own free will, and whistling. He went out and closed the door. Then he