“Who said so? Who said anythin’ about quittin’, I’d like to know. Not me.... And say, if I ketch you tryin’ to quit, I’ll skin you alive.... You ’n’ me, we got to stick by that leetle gal, we have.... Foreman of the composin’ room!... By jing!... Perty as a picture.... By jing!”
“Say, you gone crazy, or what?”
“She’s a-comin’ back right after lunch. Git to work, you. Git this office cleaned up and swept up and dusted up.... Think she kin work amongst this filth.... Git a mop and a pail. We’ll fix up this hole so’s she kin eat off’n the floor if she takes a notion.... Simmy, she’s goin’ to stay and run this here paper. That cunnin’ leetle gal’s goin’ to be our boss.... Goddlemighty!...”
CHAPTER II
CARMEL LEE had been told by everybody, ever since she could remember being told anything, that she was headstrong and impulsive. Her parents had impressed it upon her and, rather proudly, had disseminated the fact among the neighbors until it became a tradition in the little Michigan town where she was born. People held the idea that one must make allowances for Carmel and be perpetually ready to look with tolerance on outbursts of impulse. Her teachers had accepted the tradition and were accustomed to advise with her upon the point. The reputation accompanied her to the university, and only a few weeks before, upon her graduation, the head of the Department of Rhetoric (which included a course in journalism) spent an entire valuable hour beseeching her to curb her willfulness and to count as high as fifty before she reached a decision.
So Carmel, after being the victim of such propaganda for sixteen or seventeen years, could not be censured if she believed it herself. She had gotten to be rather afraid of Carmel and of what Carmel might do unexpectedly. Circumspection and repression had become her watchwords, and the present business of her life was to look before she leaped. She had made a vow of deliberation. As soon as she found herself wanting to do something she became suspicious of it; and latterly, with grim determination, she had taken herself in hand. Whenever she became aware of a desire to act, she compelled herself to sit down and think it over. Not that this did a great deal of good, but it gave her a very pleasing sensation of self-mastery. As a matter of fact, she was not at all introspective. She had taken the word of bystanders for her impulsiveness; it was no discovery of her own. And now that she was schooling herself in repression, she did not perceive in the least that she failed to repress. When she wanted to do a thing, she usually did it. The deliberation only postponed the event. When she forced herself to pause and scrutinize a desire, she merely paused and scrutinized it—and then went ahead and did what she desired.
It may be considered peculiar that a girl who had inherited a newspaper, as Carmel had done, should have paid so cursory a first visit. It would have been natural to rush into the shop with enthusiasm and to poke into corners and to ransack the place from end to end, and to discover exactly what it was she had become owner of. However, Carmel merely dropped in and hurried away.... This was repression. It was a distinct victory over impulse. She wanted to do it very much, so she compelled herself to turn her back and to go staidly to lunch at the hotel.
She ate very little and was totally unaware of the sensation she created in the dining room, especially over at the square table which was regarded as the property of visiting commercial travelers. It was her belief that she gave off an impression of dignity such as befitted an editor, and that a stern, businesslike air sat upon her so that none could mistake the fact that she was a woman of affairs. Truthfulness compels it to be recorded that she did not give this impression at all, but quite another one. She looked a lovely schoolgirl about to go canoeing with a box of bonbons on her lap. The commercial travelers who were so unfortunate as to be seated with their back toward her acquired cricks in their necks.
After dinner (in a day or two she would learn not to refer to it as luncheon) she compelled herself to go up to her room and to remain there for a full fifteen minutes. After this exercise, so beneficial to her will, she descended and walked very slowly to the office of the Free Press. Having thus given free rein to her bent for repression, she became herself and pounced. She pounced upon the office; she pounced upon the shop. She made friends with the cylinder press much as an ordinary individual would make friends with a nice dog, and she talked to the little job press as to a kitten and became greatly excited over the great blade of the paper cutter, and wanted Tubal to give her an instant lesson in the art of sticking type. For two hours she played with things. Then, of a sudden, it occurred to her to wonder if a living could be made out of the outfit.
It was essential that the paper should provide her with a living, and that it should go about the business of doing so almost instantly. At the moment when Carmel first set foot in Gibeon she was alone in the world. Old Man Nupley had been her last remaining relative. And—what was even more productive of unease of mind—she was the owner of exactly seventy-two dollars and sixteen cents!