"I want to speak to Mr. Harvey," she said. "Is this Mr. Harvey? This is Mrs. Davidson,—Margaret Grant—you remember, don't you? I want to see you about something very important. You are sending people out to the front all the time, aren't you, in connection with your newspapers? Well, I want to know if you can arrange for me to go.... Yes, as a woman correspondent.... Oh, they don't allow it? Not at the British front?... Well, I've got to arrange it somehow.... Won't you come and see me and talk it over?... All right, at six-thirty. Good-by."
The official photograph was still in her hand when Mr. William K. Harvey, of the Chicago Bulletin, was announced. He was a very young man to be managing the London office of a great newspaper, but this was not a disadvantage for May Margaret's purpose.
"So you want to go to the front," he said, settling down into the arm-chair on the other side of the fire. "It would certainly make a great story. We ought to be able to syndicate it all through the Middle West; but you'll have to give up the idea of the British front. We might manage the French front, I think."
"But I want particularly to go to Arras. Surely, you can manage it, Mr. Harvey. You must know all sorts of influential people here." Her voice, with its husky contralto notes, rather like those of a boy whose voice has lately broken, had always an appeal for Mr. Harvey, and it was particularly pleasing just then. He beamed through his glasses and ran his hand through his curly hair.
"I was talking to Sir William Robertson about a very similar proposition only yesterday, and Sir William told me that he'd do anything on earth for the Chicago Bulletin, but the War Office, which is in heaven, had decided finally to allow no women correspondents at the British front."
May Margaret rose and went to the window. For a moment she pressed her brow against the cool glass and, as she stared hopelessly at the busses rumbling by, an idea came to her. She wondered that she had not thought of it before.
"Come here, Mr. Harvey," she said. "I want to show you something."
He joined her at the window. A bus had halted by the opposite pavement. The conductor was swinging lightly down by the hand-rail, a very youthful looking conductor, in breeches and leggings.
"Is that a man or a woman?" said May Margaret.
"A woman, isn't it?"