“You go,” interposed Lena. “If I go, it will look as though I knew. But you can walk in all innocent.”
Therefore the conversation on matters which were to change the destiny of a city was interrupted by a smart knock on the assistant editor’s door, and Miss Huntress, eminently self-possessed, walked in on the two young men.
“Beg pardon, Mr. Norris, I didn’t know you had any one here,” she began. “But I won’t keep you a moment. The truth is, I want a series of articles on the private libraries of the city, and, knowing that you are acquainted with Mrs. Percival, I thought you’d help the paper to an opening there.”
“Let me introduce Mr. Percival,” said Norris. “He can give you more information than I can.”
“Well, this is lucky!” ejaculated Miss Huntress.
“Our library isn’t a show affair,” Dick said stiffly. “My mother, I am sure, would be very unwilling to submit to that kind of a write-up. My father was a book-lover, not a book-fancier. It’s essentially a private collection.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way about it,” Miss Huntress rejoined equably. “Of course, nowadays, I can’t admit that there’s any such thing as privacy. And it isn’t only that I want the articles, Mr. Percival. I want to help along a girl that needs the work, and an awfully nice girl she is. We haven’t any regular job for her, and all I can do is to throw odd bits of work in her way. She has an old mother to support, and it would be a real charity to her if you’d look at it in that light. Miss Quincy is a perfect lady, and you may be sure she’d take no advantage of you to write up anything sensational or impertinent.”
Dick started and glanced consciously at Norris, who grinned back.
“Of course that puts another light on it,” Mr. Percival said after a decent pause, and trying to compose his face to a judicial expression. “I’d hate to put a stumbling-block in the way of a girl like that. Ah-um—I’ll speak to my mother about it, Miss Huntress, and I dare say I can persuade her to allow it.”
“That’s very good of you,” Miss Huntress answered,—with sad comprehension that a complexion like Lena’s was a great aid to a literary career. “You couldn’t manage to let Miss Quincy go up this afternoon, could you?” she went on with characteristic energy in pushing an advantage. “It would be a good thing if she could get her first stuff ready for the Saturday-night issue.”