XXIX
CELIMENE prophesied disaster when the enterprising partner showed her the cable she proposed to send.
“Leave this to me, honey.” Mame sounded absurdly full of confidence. “I know New York better than you. If New York wants a thing it wants it. And if it thinks a thing worth while it don’t mind what it pays.”
“But are we so worth while as all that?”
Mame appeared to have not the least doubt on the point. She clapped on her hat, sallied forth and sent the cable.
In four and twenty hours, less forty-five minutes, came the answer. Four hundred dollars a week were offered with a contract for one year.
Mame was triumphant. “What did I tell you, honey? They sure want us bad.”
Lady Violet marvelled. “Let us make haste and accept it, before they change their minds,” was her advice.
But Mame did not agree. “Those boobs are going up. They know we are the goods, else they wouldn’t have been so free with their cables at the onset.”
“But—!” persisted Lady Violet.
Mame took paper and pen. She spent a tense five minutes on a piece of careful if rather syncopated prose.
Original terms rock bottom. Sorrow.Du Rance.
Original terms rock bottom. Sorrow.Du Rance.
Lady Violet was constrained to laugh rather wryly over the fruit of her labours. “Ours, I fancy, will be the sorrow.”
The undefeated little go-getter laughed, too, but for a different reason. Once more she rose and crammed on her hat. Again she sallied forth to the convenient post office round the corner in Dover Street, while her friend was left wondering how she dared!
A further twenty-four hours went by. Plus twenty-five minutes on this occasion, to be exact. And then appeared the stern Davis with cablegram number three.
A Napoleon-at-Austerlitz look came upon Mame. “Keep the messenger,” she instructed Davis before opening the envelope. Full of will as she was, there could be no denying that her hand trembled and that her face was pale. Suddenly she gave a whoop of triumph. “There, honey, what did I tell you?” She tossed the cablegram to Celimene. “Seems to me that old office calendar is right every time.”
Lady Violet read amazedly:
Terms accepted. Cable confirmation.Dobree.
Terms accepted. Cable confirmation.Dobree.
Napoleon-at-Austerlitz poised a majestic pencil and then dashed grandly:
Mail two years contract instanter.Du Rance.
Mail two years contract instanter.Du Rance.
The pregnant words were duly submitted to Celimene.
“Now then, honey, what about it?”
Lady Violet acknowledged her defeat with a cheerful grace. These Americans were wonderful!
Mame produced a pound note and gave it to Davis along with the cable. “For the messenger,” she said. But just as the emissary was passing out of the door she changed her mind. “Come to think of it, I’ll send that cable myself.”
The paper was handed back; and the redoubtable Davis went to dismiss the messenger, while yet again Miss Du Rance proceeded to clap on her hat. She had called to mind that an Anonymous highbrow had laid it down in the office calendar that if you want a thing done well you must do it yourself.
The office calendar had a sure trick of being infallible. Hence the quick but firm steps of Mame along Half Moon Street, towards that so conveniently near-at-hand post office.