"Then you think I can't make 'boots' pay a profit?" asks Vee.
"That would be my guess," says I. "If it was a question of underwritin' a stock issue for the scheme I'd have to turn it down."
"Good!" says Vee. "Now I shall work all the harder. Tarkins will be around early in the morning to get you as our first customer."
Say, for the next few days she certainly was a busy party--plannin' out her block campaign, lookin' over supply bills, and checkin' up Tarkins's reports.
I don't know when I'd ever seen her so interested in anything, or so chirky. Her cheeks were pink all the time and her eyes dancin'. And somehow we had such a lot to talk about.
Course, though, I didn't expect it to last. You wouldn't look for a girl like Vee, who'd never had any trainin' for that sort of thing, to start a new line and make a go of it right off the bat. But, so long as she wasn't investin' very heavy, it didn't matter.
And then, here last night, after she'd been workin' over her account-books for an hour or so, she comes at me with a whoop, and waves a sheet of paper under my nose excited.
"Now, Mister Business Man," says she, "what do you think of that?"
"One hundred and seventeen regular customers the first week," says she, "and a net profit of $23.45. Now how about underwriting that stock issue?"
Well, it was a case of backin' up. She had it all figured out plain. She'd made good from the start. And, just to prove that it's real money that she's made all by herself, she insists on invitin' me out to a celebration dinner. It's a swell one, too, take it from me.
And afterwards we sits up until long past midnight while Vee plans a chain of "boots" all over the city.
"Gee!" says I. "Maybe you'll be gettin' yourself written up as 'The Shine Queen of New York' or something like that. Lucky Auntie's in Jamaica. Think what a jolt it would give her."
"I don't care," says Vee. "I've found a job."
"Guess you have," says I. "And, as I've remarked once or twice before, you're some girl."
And here all along I'd been kiddin' myself that I was a perfectly good private sec. Also I had an idea the Corrugated Trust was one of the main piers that kept New York from slumpin' into the North River, and that the boss, Old Hickory Ellins, was sort of a human skyscraper who loomed up as imposin' in the financial foreground as the Metropolitan Tower does on the picture post-cards that ten-day trippers mail to the folks back home.