1954-Vol5-No1

What's the difference? Mr. Walter Muir wouldn't tell her anyway. If Edmond has left the apartment, then he's left his job.

He's left the city.

Frances giggled louder.

Oh Frances, you? At your age?

And to think I've only been to Edmond's apartment twice.

Once on that night of October six months ago and then—when was it — ?

And as if this too was meant to be funny, the giggling increased, fitfully, her voice going gradually higher until it cracked. « Mm Frances Sickles, she thought, Sickles.

So now, what will it be Frances at your age? Hallam & Rand, Steel Products Of Every Description.

Ah yes marvelous now really.

Thick dirty green ledgers. What, Mr. G? Your discount? Why, list price less forty and ten.

Ah yes.

Listening to Mr. Rand's superb rendition of the English language. "Awl G'wan! A nice goil like you?"

Nothing poetic. But it was, it was.

That was it, Miss Sickles, or, Miss Stickles, the way Mr. Rand always pronounced her name, no matter how many times she corrected him. Miss Sickles of Hallam & Rand's. Bookkeeper for Steel Products Of Every Description.

Looking day in and day out at the washed out face of Ernie, the warehouseman. "Frances, will you talk to my girlfriend?

I'm in the doghouse again." Or, that young stupid Tommy, the shipping clerk, who admired Mr. Rand and thought he should emulate him. "H'ya, Frances, h'ya! Looking sharp, looking sharp."

The days of riding the dingy trolley on that long street which wiggled like a giant slug. The same decrepit houses, the same nondescript faces stamped from the same coarse die. That horrible bell clanging whenever a freight train lumbered past the railroad crossing. The terrible triteness, a fixed, monotonous routine; just Miss Sickles Frances Sickles Frances.

She stopped walking along the East River Drive and sat down on one of the benches. It was beginning to get chilly and she shivered a little.

70