“To Mr. Parker, and with you? No, Annie; that I cannot do.”
Annie suddenly fell on her knees and took one of Leslie’s hands in hers.
“How luxurious this room is,” she said. She looked around it as she spoke, glancing at the curtained windows, the pictured walls, the comfortable chair in which Leslie was seated.
“Your friends are rich,” she continued. “And although your home is plain enough, yet you have never wanted. I wonder, Leslie, if you were ever hungry, hungry to the point of starvation.”
“Oh, you’d know very well if you had suffered. Now, I have. Let me show you the money I have in my pocket.”
She slipped her hand into her pocket, took out her purse, and tumbled its contents into Leslie’s lap.
“But you must look. See, here is a ten-shilling piece, and here are four shillings. Ten and four make fourteen. That is all I possess, absolutely all, and I have not a friend in the world. My brother——”
“Never mind where he is. If he keeps his promise to you I must never see him again; he must never come back to England. But listen; this has nothing to do with my brother—it has to do with me. I could scarcely live on less than two shillings a day, which means that I have exactly a week in which to spend my money. At the end of that time where am I?”
She stood up and held out her empty palms.
“Now listen, Leslie. I know Mr. Parker does not like me, and he never liked Rupert. It is true he was kind to me, for he helped to pay for my education at St. Wode’s. If I had taken a first-class at my final I could have got a good situation as a teacher, although I hate teaching, for I am too impatient and too dreamy; but as I have only barely taken an ordinary, all that sort of thing is hopeless. Besides, even if it were not hopeless, there is nothing vacant. I must live while I am waiting for a situation. Now, Mr. Parker wants a secretary. He wants a girl to come to his office every day to write his letters and to attend generally to his correspondence, and I intend to secure that post. I am told that he offers his secretary two guineas a week. I mean to be that secretary: I mean to earn that money. He won’t give me the post, though, because he does not like me well enough; but if you come with me and plead for me, just because he likes you, because he loves you, he will give the post to me. Can you come now, at once? I was at his office this morning. I did not say who I was; and, do you know, there were twenty girls waiting to see him for this one situation. They all looked capable and clever, the sort who would write his letters and attend to his correspondence, and keep things going for him. But every one of those twenty girls are to be disappointed, for I am to be the successful one. I shall be, if you will speak a good word for me. Come, Leslie, will you do this for me?”