Oh, Pearlie could cook!
On week days Pearlie rattled the typewriter keys, but on Sundays
she shooed her mother out of the kitchen. Her mother went,
protesting faintly: "Now, Pearlie, don't fuss so for dinner. You
ought to get your rest on Sunday instead of stewing over a hot
stove all morning."
"Hot fiddlesticks, ma," Pearlie would say, cheerily. "It ain't
hot, because it's a gas stove. And I'll only get fat if I sit
around. You put on your black-and-white and go to church. Call me
when you've got as far as your corsets, and I'll puff your hair
for you in the back." In her capacity of public stenographer at
the Burke Hotel, it was Pearlie's duty to take letters dictated
by traveling men and beginning: "Yours of the 10th at hand. In
reply would say . . ." or: "Enclosed please find, etc." As
clinching proof of her plainness it may be stated that none of
the traveling men, not even Max Baum, who was so fresh that the
girl at the cigar counter actually had to squelch him, ever
called Pearlie "baby doll," or tried to make a date with her. Not
that Pearlie would ever have allowed them to. But she never had
had to reprove them. During pauses in dictation she had a way of
peering near-sightedly over her glasses at the dapper,
well-dressed traveling salesman who was rolling off the items on
his sale bill.
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