U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [133]
Janey felt quite indignant about it. The office was lovely the way it was, quite distinctive, everybody said so. She wondered who this woman was who was putting ideas into J. Ward's head. Next day when she had to make out a check for two hundred and fifty dol ars on account to Stoddard and Hutchins, Interior Decorators, she almost spoke her mind, but after al it was hardly her business. After that Miss Stoddard seemed to be around the office al the time. The work was done at night so that every morning when Janey came in, she found something
changed. It was al being done over in black and white with curtains and upholstery of a funny claret-color. Janey
-336-didn't like it at al but Gladys said it was in the modern style and very interesting. Mr. Robbins refused to have his private cubbyhole touched and he and J. Ward almost had words about it, but in the end he had his own way and the rumor went round that J. Ward had had to in-crease his salary to keep him from going to another agency. Labor Day Janey moved. She was sorry to leave the
s but she'd met a middleaged woman named
Eliza Tingley who worked for a lawyer on the same floor as J. Ward's office. Eliza Tingley was a Baltimorean, had passed a bar examination herself and Janey said to herself that she was a woman of the world. She and her twin brother, who was a certified accountant, had taken a floor of a house on West 23rd Street in the Chelsea district and they asked Janey to come in with them. It meant being free from the subway and Janey felt that the little walk over to Fifth Avenue every morning would do her good. The minute she'd seen Eliza Tingley in the lunchcounter downstairs she'd taken a fancy to her. Things at the Tingleys were free and easy and Janey felt at home there. Sometimes they had a drink in the evening. Eliza was a good cook and they'd take a long time over dinner and play a couple of rubbers of threehanded bridge before going to bed. Saturday night they'd almost always go to the theater. Eddy Tingley would get the seats at a cut-rate agency he knew. They subscribed to The Literary Di- gest and to The Century and The Ladies'
Home Journal and Sundays they had roast chicken or duck and read the magazine section of The New York Times .
The Tingleys had a good many friends and they liked Janey and included her in everything and she felt that she was living the way she'd like to live. It was exciting too that winter with rumors of war al the time. They had a big map of Europe hung up on the livingroom wal and marked the positions of the Al ied armies with little
-337-flags. They were heart and soul for the Al ies and names like Verdun or Chemin des Dames started little shivers running down their spines. Eliza wanted to travel and made Janey tel her over and over again every detail of her trip to Mexico; they began to plan a trip abroad to-gether when the war was over and Janey began to save money for it. When Alice wrote from Washington that maybe she would pul up stakes in Washington and go down to New York, Janey wrote saying that it was so hard for a girl to get a job in New York just at present and that maybe it wasn't such a good idea.
Al that fal J. Ward's face looked white and drawn. He got in the habit of coming into the office Sunday after-noons and Janey was only too glad to run around there after dinner to help him out. They'd talk over the events of the week in the office and J. Ward would dictate a lot of private letters to her and tel her she was a treasure and leave her there typing away happily. Janey was wor-ried too. Although new accounts came in al the time the firm wasn't in a very good financial condition. J. Ward had made some unfortunate plunges in the Street and was having a hard time holding things together. He was anxious to buy out the large interest stil held by old Mrs. Staple and talked of notes his wife had gotten hold of and that he was afraid his wife would use unwisely. Janey could see that his wife was a disagreeable peevish woman trying to use her mother's money as a means of keeping a hold on J. Ward. She never said anything to the Tingleys about J. Ward personal y, but she talked a great deal about the business and they agreed with her that the work was so interesting. She was looking forward to this Christmas because J. Ward had hinted that he would give her a raise.