"It is. I always feel as if I had been caught in a cyclone, carried violently round in a circle and deposited in the spot I started from. You see there's the same pother every week, and we're always caught in the same rush. Newspaper work's a rotten grind, anyhow."
"To outsiders it always sounds nerve-racking excitement. What on earth would you do if you had to catalogue books all day?"
"That is pretty bad." Herrick's eyes softened as they always did when he was making a woman understand his understanding.
Jean felt that without meaning to she had told this stranger a great deal about herself. Almost as if she had told him of her mother, of Tom and Elsie and Tommykins and the long, interminable Sundays. She flushed. Instantly the understanding vanished from Herrick's eyes and he shrugged indifferently.
"I suppose anything we have to stick at feels the same way."
"Did you get your work done the other night?" Jean asked it after a pause in which she wondered what she could say that wouldn't sound as if she had been thinking about him.
"Oh yes, indeed. But it was a hard pull. If you knew me better, Miss Norris, you would congratulate me on that achievement." He looked like a mischievous boy expecting to be punished.
Jean smiled in sympathy. "What on? Sticking to a disagreeable job till it's done?"
"Well, put that way, it does sound rather bald. But you see The Bunch was having a blow-out and little Franklin had to stay in his attic and work. Maybe if you knew what The Bunch can do in the way of highjinks, even you'd be sorry for me."
"Maybe I would. Are they such terribly enticing affairs?"