Carmella Commands
“Hello, Tommaso!” he exclaimed. “How does it go?”
Tommaso grinned, but shook his head dubiously.
“Here you, Kid Kate,” said Mr. Barrington. “You interpret. Ask him if he could do faster work if he had more men and trucks.”
“Of course he could,” answered the girl. “I won’t ask him any such silly question.”
“Oh, you won’t! Well, ask him if he will get more men and trucks if I advance the money. Will you ask him that, Miss Won’t?”
“Sure I’ll ask him that,” said Carmella. She talked some minutes with her father in Italian, weighing his replies and then asking more questions, until Mr. Barrington fidgeted. Finally, turning to him, she said:
“My father says he can and will. What are you going to do about it?”
For the next half hour Carmella stood between the two men, translating their “ifs” and “ands” more or less to suit her own ideas. Keenly alert to the need of seeing that Tommaso made the right answers, she was still conscious of an underlying cause of worriment.
Nobody had mentioned the green and red dress she had donned for the occasion. She wondered if Dixon had not noticed it.
“Why on earth does everybody in the world have to be dumb?” she thought to herself. And then, turning to her father, she explained:
“He says he will finance you, week by week, for
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