Five o’clock; and the lethargic slowness of the afternoon changed into activity with the abruptness with which light comes after the turning of an electric switch. The girls at the desks in the outer room--no bobbed locks in those days, but grotesque oddities of coiffure drooping low over foreheads and strangely puffed out over ears--stood up so unanimously, so instantly, that it was plain they had been waiting for the hands of the clock to mark the hour of liberation. The fugue of typewriters stopped; voices and the shuffling of feet sounded another rhythm. A stenographer closed a door behind her, came forward with red-ruled notebook and pencil and made her way to a desk near a window, a di…
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