“I don’t know what you want,” she said, continuing her task.
“I want you to treat me nicely and respectfully.”
“Call you ‘sir,’ perhaps?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, call me ‘sir.’ I should love it.”
“Then I wish you would go upstairs, sir.”
His mouth closed, and a frown came on his face. He jumped suddenly down.
“You’re too blessed superior for anything,” he said.
And he went away to the other girls. He felt he was being angrier than he had any need to be. In fact, he doubted slightly that he was showing off. But if he were, then he would. Clara heard him laughing, in a way she hated, with the girls down the next room.
When at evening he went through the department after the girls had gone, he saw his chocolates lying untouched in front of Clara’s machine. He left them. In the morning they were still there, and Clara was at work. Later on Minnie, a little brunette they called Pussy, called to him:
“Hey, haven’t you got a chocolate for anybody?”
“Sorry, Pussy,” he replied. “I meant to have offered them; then I went and forgot ’em.”
“I think you did,” she answered.
“I’ll bring you some this afternoon. You don’t want them after they’ve been lying about, do you?”
“Oh, I’m not particular,” smiled Pussy.
“Oh no,” he said. “They’ll be dusty.”
He went up to Clara’s bench.
“Sorry I left these things littering about,” he said.
She flushed scarlet. He gathered them together in his fist.
“They’ll be dirty now,” he said. “You should have taken them. I wonder why you didn’t. I meant to have told you I wanted you to.”
He flung them out of the window into the yard below. He just glanced at her. She winced from his eyes.
In the afternoon he brought another packet.
“Will you take some?” he said, offering them first to Clara. “These are fresh.”
She accepted one, and put it onto the bench.
“Oh, take several—for luck,” he said.
She took a couple more, and put them on the bench also. Then she turned in confusion to her work. He went on up the room.
“Here you are, Pussy,” he said. “Don’t be greedy!”
