“You must have,” Fanny laughed, “with only nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine to look after.”
“You look as if you'd been on a vacation, instead of a test trip.”
“So I have. Why didn't you warn me that business, as transacted in New York, is a series of social rites? I didn't have enough white kid gloves to go round. No one will talk business in an office. I don't see what they use offices for, except as places in which to receive their mail. You utter the word `Business,' and the other person immediately says, `Lunch.' No wholesaler seems able to quote you his prices until he has been sustained by half a dozen Cape Cods. I don't want to see a restaurant or a rose silk shade for weeks.”
Fenger tapped the little pile of papers on his desk. “I've read your reports. If you can do that on lunches, I'd like to see what you could put over in a series of dinners.”
“Heaven forbid,” said Fanny, fervently. Then, for a very concentrated fifteen minutes they went over the reports together. Fanny's voice grew dry and lifeless as she went into figures.
“You don't sound particularly enthusiastic,” Fenger said, when they had finished, “considering that you've accomplished what you set out to do.”
“That's just it,” quickly. “I like the uncertainty. It was interesting to deal directly with those people, to stack one's arguments, and personality, and mentality and power over theirs, until they had to give way. But after that! Well, you can't expect me to be vitally interested in gross lots, and carloads and dating.”
“It's part of business.”
“It's the part I hate.”
Fenger stacked the papers neatly. “You came in June, didn't you?”