"Yes."
"Do you want something to eat? Or drink? What did you have to drink?" he added, glancing at the empty gla.s.s on the table.
"Certina."
"Certina?" he queried, uncertain at first whether she was joking. "How could you get Certina here?"
"Why not? They keep it at all these places. There"s quite a bar-trade in it."
"Is that so?" said Hal, with a vague feeling of disturbance of ideas.
"Which job do you like best: the Certina or the newspaper, Miss Neal?"
"My other boss calls me Milly," she suggested.
"Very well,--Milly, then."
"Oh, I"m for the office. It"s more exciting, a lot."
"Your stuff," said Hal, in the language of the cult, "is catching on."
"You don"t like it, though," she countered quickly.
"Yes, I do. Much better than I did, anyway. But the point is that it"s a success. Editorially I _have_ to like it."
"I"d rather you liked it personally."
"Some of it I do. The "Lunch-Time Chats"--"
"And some of it you think is vulgar."
"One has to suit one"s style to the matter," propounded Hal. ""Kitty the Cutie" isn"t supposed to be a college professor."
"I hate to have you think me vulgar," she insisted.
"Oh, come!" he protested; "that isn"t fair. I don"t think _you_ vulgar, Milly."
"I like to have you call me Milly," she said.
"It seems quite natural to," he answered lightly.
"I"ve thought sometimes I"d like to try my hand at a regular news story," she went on, in a changed tone. "I think I"ve got one, if I could only do it right; one of those facts-behind-the-news stories that you talked to us about. Do you remember meeting me with Max Veltman the other night?"
"Yes."
"Did you think it was queer?"
"A little."
"A girl I used to know back in the country tried to kill herself. She wrote me a letter, but it didn"t get to me till after midnight, so I called up Max and got him to go with me down to the Rookeries district where she lives. Poor little Maggie! She got caught in one of those sewing-girl traps."
"Some kind of machinery?"
"Machinery? You don"t know much about what goes on in your town, do you?"
"Not as much as an editor ought to know--which is everything."
"I"ll bring you Maggie"s letter. That tells it better than I can. And I want to write it up, too. Let me write it up for the paper." She leaned forward and her eyes besought him. "I want to prove I can do something besides being a vulgar little "Kitty the Cutie.""
"Oh, my dear," he said, half paternally, but only half, "I"m sorry I hurt you with that word."
"You didn"t mean to." Her smile forgave him. "Maggie"s story means another fight for the paper. Can we stand another?"
He warmed to the possessive "we." "So you know about our warfare," he said.
"More than you think, perhaps. The books you gave me aren"t the only things I study. I study the "Clarion," too."
"Why?" he asked, interested.
"Because it"s yours." She looked at him straightly now. "Can you pull it through, Boss?"
"I think so. I hope so."
"We"ve lost a lot of ads. I can reckon that up, because I had some experience in the advertising department of the Certina shop, and I know rates." She pursed her lips with a dainty effect of careful computation.
"Somewhere about four thousand a week out, isn"t it?"
"Four thousand, three hundred and seventy in store business last week."
The talk settled down and confined itself to the financial and editorial policies of the paper, Milly asking a hundred eager and shrewd questions, now and again proffering some tentative counsel or caution.
Impersonal though it seemed, through it Hal felt a growing tensity of intercourse; a sense of pregnant and perilous intimacy drawing them together.
"Since you"re taking such an interest, I might get you to help Mr. Ellis run the paper when I go away," he suggested jocularly.
"You"re not going away?" The query came in a sort of gasp.
"Next week."
"For long?" Her hand, as if in protest against the dreaded answer, went out to the arm of his chair. His own met and covered it rea.s.suringly.
"Not very. It"s the new press."
"We"re going to have a new press?"
"Hadn"t you heard? You seem to know so much about the office. We"re going to build up the bas.e.m.e.nt and set the press just inside the front wall and then cut a big window through so that the world and his wife can see the "Clarion" in the very act of making them better."
Both fell silent. Their hands still clung. Their eyes were fixed upon the fire. Suddenly a log, half-consumed, crashed down, sending abroad a shower of sparks. The girl darted swiftly up to stamp out a tiny flame at her feet. Standing, she half turned toward Hal.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"To New York."