"Looks it, too," observed L.P. McQuiggan jauntily, addressing the upper far corner of the room.
Miss Neal looked at him, met a knowing and conscious smile, looked right through the smile, and looked away again, all with the air of one who gazes out into nothingness.
"Guess I"ll go look up this Shearson person," said Mr. McQuiggan, a trifle less jauntily. "See you all later."
"I"d no notion you were the writer of the Cutie paragraphs, Milly," said Dr. Surtaine. "They"re lively stuff."
"n.o.body has. I"m keeping it dark. It"s only a try-out. You _did_ send for me, didn"t you?" she added, turning to Hal.
"Yes. What I had in mind to say to you--that is, to the author--the writer of the paragraphs," stumbled Hal, "is that they"re a little too--too--"
"Too flip?" queried his father. "That"s what makes "em go."
"If they could be done in a manner not quite so undignified," suggested the editor-in-chief.
Color rose in the girl"s smooth cheek. "You think they"re vulgar," she charged.
"That"s rather too harsh a word," he protested.
"You do! I can see it." She flushed an angry red. "I"d rather stop altogether than have you think that."
"Don"t be young," put in McGuire Ellis, with vigor. "Kitty has caught on. It"s a good feature. The paper can"t afford to drop it."
"That"s right," supplemented Dr. Surtaine. "People are beginning to talk about those items. They read "em. I read "em myself. They"ve got the go, the pep. They"re different. But, Milly, I didn"t even know you could write."
"Neither did I," said the girl staidly, "till I got to putting down some of the things I heard the girls say, and stringing them together with nonsense of my own. One evening I showed some of it to Mr. Veltman, and he took it here and had it printed."
"I was going to suggest, Mr. Surtaine," said McGuire Ellis formally, "that we put Miss Kitty on the five-dollar-a-column basis and make her an every-other-day editorial page feature. I think the stuff"s worth it."
"We can give it a trial," said his princ.i.p.al, a little dubiously, "since you think so well of it."
"Then, Milly, I suppose you"ll be quitting the shop to become a full-fledged writer," remarked Dr. Surtaine.
"No, indeed, Chief." The girl smiled at him with that frank friendliness which Hal had noted as informing every relationship between Dr. Surtaine and the employees of the Certina plant. "I"ll stick. The regular pay envelope looks good to me. And I can do this work after hours."
"How would it be if I was to put you on half-time, Milly?" suggested her employer. "You can keep your department going by being there in the mornings and have your afternoons for the writing."
The girl thanked him demurely but with genuine grat.i.tude.
"Then we"ll look for your copy here on alternate days," said Hal. "And I think I"ll give you a desk. As this develops into an editorial feature I shall want to keep an eye on it and to be in touch with you. Perhaps I could make suggestions sometimes."
She rose, thanking him, and Hal held open the door for her. Once again he felt, with a strange sensation, her eyes take hold on his as she pa.s.sed him.
"Pretty kid," observed Ellis. "Veltman is crazy about her, they say."
"_Good_ kid, too," added Dr. Surtaine, emphasizing the adjective. "You might tell Veltman that, whoever he is."
"Tell him, yourself," retorted Ellis with entire good nature. "He isn"t the sort to offer gratuitous information to."
Upon this advice, L.P. McQuiggan reentered. "All fixed," said he, with evident satisfaction. "We went to the mat on rates, but Shearson agreed to give me some good reading notices. Now, I"ll beat it. See you to-night, Andy?"
Dr. Surtaine nodded. "You owe me a commission, Boyee," said he, smiling at Hal as McQuiggan made his exit. "But I"ll let you off this time. I guess it won"t be the last business I bring in to you. Only, don"t you and Ellis go looking every gift horse too hard in the teeth. You might get bit."
"Shut your eyes and swallow it and ask no questions, if it"s good, eh, Doctor?" said McGuire Ellis. "That"s the motto for your practice."
"Right you are, my boy. And it"s the motto of sound business. What is business?" he continued, soaring aloft upon the wings of a Paean of Policy. "Why, business is a deal between you and me in which I give you my goods and a pleasant word, and you give me your dollar and a polite reply. Some folks always want to know where the dollar came from. Not me! I"m satisfied to know that its coming to me. Money has wings, and if you throw stones at it, it"ll fly away fast. And you want to remember,"
he concluded with the fervor of honest conviction, "that a newspaper can"t be quite right, any more than a man can, unless it makes its own living. Well. I"m not going to preach any more. So long, boys."
"What do you think of it, Mr. Surtaine?" inquired McGuire Ellis, after the lecturer had gone his way. "Pretty sound sense, eh?"
"I wonder just what you mean by that, Ellis. Not what you say, certainly."
But Ellis only laughed and turned to his "flimsy."
Meantime the editor of the "Clarion" was being quietly but persistently beset by another sermonizer, less c.o.c.ksure of text than the Sweet Singer of Policy, but more subtle in influence. This was Miss Esme Elliot.
Already, the half-jocular partnership undertaken at the outset of their acquaintance had developed into a real, if somewhat indeterminate connection. Esme found her new acquaintance interesting both for himself and for his career. Her set in general considered the ripening friendship merely "another of Esme"s flirtations," and variously prophesied the denouement. To the girl"s own mind it was not a flirtation at all. She was (she a.s.sured herself) genuinely absorbed in the development of a new mission in which she aspired to be influential.
That she already exercised a strong sway of personality over Hal Surtaine, she realized. Indeed, in the superb confidence of her charm, she would have been astonished had it been otherwise. Just where her interest in the newly adventured professional field ended, and in Harrington Surtaine, the man, began, she would have been puzzled to say.
Kathleen Pierce had bluntly questioned her on the subject.
"Yes, of course I like him," said Esme frankly. "He"s interesting and he"s a gentleman, and he has a certain force about him, and he"s"--she paused, groping for a characterization--"he"s unexpected."
"What gets me," said Kathleen, in her easy slang, "is that he never pulls any knighthood-in-flower stuff, yet you somehow feel it"s there.
Know what I mean? There"s a sc.r.a.pper behind that nice-boy smile."
"He hasn"t sc.r.a.pped with me, yet, Kathie," smiled the beauty.
"Don"t let him," advised the other. "It mightn"t be safe. Still, I suppose you understand him by now, down to the ground."
"Indeed I do not. Didn"t I tell you he was unexpected? He has an uncomfortable trick," complained Miss Elliot, "just when everything is smooth and lovely, of suddenly leveling those gray-blue eyes of his at you, like two pistols. "Throw up your hands and tell me what you really mean!" One doesn"t always want to tell what one really means."
"Bet you have to with him, sooner or later," returned her friend.
This conversation took place at the Vanes" _al fresco_ tea, to which Hal came for a few minutes, late in the afternoon of his father"s visit with McQuiggan, mainly in the hope of seeing Esme Elliot. Within five minutes after his arrival, Worthington society was frowning, or smiling, according as it was masculine or feminine, at their backs, as they strolled away toward the garden. Miss Esme was feeling a bit petulant, perhaps because of Kathie Pierce"s final taunt.
"I think you aren"t living up to our partnership," she accused.
"Is it a partnership, where one party is absolute slave to the other"s slightest wish?" he smiled.
"There! That is exactly it. You treat me like a child."
"I don"t think of you as a child, I a.s.sure you."
"You listen to all I say with pretended deference, and smile and--and go your own way with inevitable motion."
"Wherein have I failed in my allegiance?" asked Hal, courteously concerned. "Haven"t we published everything about all the charities that you"re interested in?"
"Oh, yes. So far as that goes. But the paper itself doesn"t seem to change any. It"s got the same tone it always had."
"What"s wrong with its tone?" The eyes were leveled at her now.