Several times, six
months or so apart, he had increased her salary, until now she
was receiving ninety dollars a month. Beyond this he dared not
go, though he had got around it by making the work easier. This
he had accomplished after her return from a vacation, by
retaining her substitute as an assistant. Also, he had changed
his office suite, so that now the two girls had a room by
themselves.
His eye had become quite critical wherever Dede Mason was
concerned. He had long since noted her pride of carriage. It
was unobtrusive, yet it was there. He decided, from the way she
carried it, that she deemed her body a thing to be proud of, to
be cared for as a beautiful and valued possession. In this, and
in the way she carried her clothes, he compared her with her
assistant, with the stenographers he encountered in other
offices, with the women he saw on the sidewalks. "She's sure
well put up," he communed with himself; "and she sure knows how
to dress and carry it off without being stuck on herself and
without laying it on thick."
The more he saw of her, and the more he thought he knew of her,
the more unapproachable did she seem to him. But since he had no
intention of approaching her, this was anything but an
unsatisfactory fact.
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