"Please come in." She pressed the electric button, shook hands with him and shut the door. His air was at once apologetic and glad, but all the bitterness and anger seemed to have gone. He stood holding his soft felt hat in his hand and looking through his glasses, very steadily and kindly, Eleanor thought.
"Won't you sit down?"
"We newspaper chaps should pretty nearly apologize for coming into your presence, Miss MacDonald," he began. "I've wanted to tell you how we fellows all regret that. I hope you know that kind of thing doesn't come from inside the office. It comes from influences outside."
He had seated himself shading his eyes from the light with his hand, an old trick of his compositor days, and still looked at her in the same friendly way.
"Ever hear of the Down-East daily that black-guarded one of our greatest presidents the very day he died? I've often wondered if the public realized when that item appeared that not an editor on the staff knew it was coming out, that when two of the editors read it, they cried and went to pieces right there and then before their men for very shame! Item had been sent straight to the composing room just before the forms were locked up, by man who owned the paper. President had refused him some public concession. Such things sometimes happen to lesser folks than presidents."
"Were you so kind as to come here to say all this to me?" asked Eleanor.
"No, Miss MacDonald, I wasn't!" He blushed furiously, like a boy caught in the act culpable. "Fact is, I'm keen to see Wayland, been such a crush of men round him all day, haven't been able to get in a word with him."
It was her turn to blush furiously.
"I didn't want him to go off up the Valley before I could get hold of him. I wanted to have a shake with him. We're in the same boat now, Miss MacDonald."
"I don't the very least bit in the world understand what you are saying."