He was in his shirt-sleeves again, and his sanguine person
seemed to radiate the heat with which he suffered.
He did not go out to lunch, but had it brought to him
in his office, where Corey saw him eating it before he
left his own desk to go out and perch on a swinging seat
before the long counter of a down-town restaurant.
He observed that all the others lunched at twelve, and he
resolved to anticipate his usual hour. When he returned,
the pretty girl who had been clicking away at a type-writer
all the morning was neatly putting out of sight the
evidences of pie from the table where her machine stood,
and was preparing to go on with her copying. In his office
Lapham lay asleep in his arm-chair, with a newspaper over
his face.
Now, while Corey lingered at the entrance to the stairway,
these two came down the stairs together, and he heard
Lapham saying, "Well, then, you better get a divorce."
He looked red and excited, and the girl's face, which she
veiled at sight of Corey, showed traces of tears.
She slipped round him into the street.
But Lapham stopped, and said, with the show of no feeling
but surprise: "Hello, Corey! Did you want to go up?"
"Yes; there were some letters I hadn't quite got through with."
"You'll find Dennis up there. But I guess you better let
them go till to-morrow.
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