U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [63]
she got an offer from Dreyfus and Carrol , the patent lawyers up on the top floor of the Riggs Building to work for them for seventeen a week, which was five dol ars more than she was getting from Mrs. Robinson. It made her feel fine. She realized now that she was good at her work and that she could support herself whatever hap-pened. On the strength of it she went down to Wood-ward and Lothrop's with Alice Dick to buy a dress. She wanted a silk grownup dress with embroidery on it. She was twentyone and was going to make seventeen dol ars a week and thought she had a right to one nice dress. Alice said it ought to be a bronzy gold color to match her hair. They went in al the stores down F
Street, but they
-151-couldn't find anything that suited that wasn't too expen-sive, so al they could do was buy some materials and some fashion magazines and take it home to Janey's mother to make up. It gal ed Janey stil being dependent on her mother this way, but there was nothing for it; so Mrs. Wil iams had to make up Janey's new dress the way she had made al her children's dresses since they were born. Janey had never had the patience to learn to sew the way Mommer could. They bought enough ma-terial so that Alice could have one too, so Mrs. Wil iams had to make up two dresses. Working at Dreyfus and Carrol 's was quite different from working at Mrs. Robinson's. There were mostly
men in the office. Mr. Dreyfus was a smal thinfaced man with a smal black moustache and smal black twinkly eyes and a touch of accent that gave him a distinguished foreign diplomat manner. He carried yel ow wash gloves and a yel ow cane and had a great variety of very much tailored overcoats. He was the brains of the firm, Jerry Burnham said. Mr. Carrol was a stout redfaced man
who smoked many cigars and cleared his throat a great deal and had a very oldtimey Southern Godblessmysoul way of talking. Jerry Burnham said he was the firm's bay window. Jerry Burnham was a wrinklefaced young
man with dissipated eyes who was the firm's adviser in technical and engineering matters. He laughed a great deal, always got into the office late, and for some reason took a fancy to Janey and used to joke about things to her while he was dictating. She liked him, though the dis-sipated look under his eyes scared her off a little. She'd have liked to have talked to him like a sister, and gotten him to stop burning the candle at both ends. Then there was an elderly accountant, Mr. Sil s, a shriveled man who lived in Anacostia and never said a word to anybody. At noon he didn't go out for lunch, but sat at his desk eating a sandwich and an apple wrapped in waxed paper
-152-which he careful y folded afterwards and put back in his pocket. Then there were two fresh errandboys and a little plainfaced typist named Miss Simonds who only got twelve a week. Al sorts of people in every sort of seedyrespectable or Peacock Al ey clothes came in during the day and stood round in the outer office listening to Mr. Carrol 's rich boom from behind the groundglass door. Mr. Dreyfus slipped in and out without a word, smiling faintly at his acquaintances, always in a great mysterious hurry. At lunch in the little cafeteria or at a sodafountain Janey 'ud tel Alice al about it and Alice would look up at her admiringly. Alice always waited for her in the vestibule at one. They'd arranged to go out then because there was less of a crowd. Neither of them ever spent more than twenty cents, so lunch didn't take them very long and they'd have time to take a turn round Lafayette Square or sometimes round the White House grounds before going back to the office.
There was one Saturday night when she had to work
late to finish up typing the description