“You don’t altogether like your fame?” said Marlowe with a teasing expression. “But you’ll soon get used to it, and then you’ll be cross if you look in the papers and don’t find your name or a picture of yourself. That’s the way ‘newspaper notoriety’ affects everybody. They first loathe, then endure, then pursue.”
“Don’t mock at me, please. It’s good in a business way, isn’t it? And I’m sure the picture is not bad—in fact, it makes me look very—intellectual. And as they printed my despatch, that can’t have been so horribly bad. Altogether I’m beginning to be reconciled and shall presently be delighted.”
“You can get copies of the paper ready for mailing in the business office—a reduction on large quantities,” said Marlowe. “And you won’t need to unwrap them to mark where your friends must look.”
Emily was glancing at her story with pretended indifference. “It makes more than I thought,” she said carelessly, giving him the paper.
“Vanity! vanity! You know you are dying to read every word of it. I’ll wager you’ll go through it a dozen times once you are alone. We always do—at first.”
“Well, why not? It’s a harmless vanity and it ought to be called honest pride. And—I owe it to you—all to you. And I’m glad it is to you that I owe it.”
At the office she was the centre of interest—for a few hours. “Isn’t she a perfect picture?” said Miss Farwell to Miss Gresham, as they watched her receiving congratulations. “And she doesn’t exaggerate herself. She probably knows that it was her looks and her dresses that got her the assignment and that make them think she’s wonderful. She really didn’t write it so very well. You could tell all the way through that it was a beginner, couldn’t you?”
“Of course it wasn’t a work of genius,” admitted Miss Gresham. “But it was very good indeed.”
“A story like that simply tells itself.” Miss Farwell used envy’s most judicial tone. “It couldn’t be spoiled.”
Miss Gresham and Emily went uptown together. “I’ve read my special several times,” said Emily, “and I don’t feel so set up over it as I did at first. I suspect they would have rewritten it if it had not got into the office late.”