Dorothy sank down on the long window seat, which ran across two sides of the sanctum, with a groan and a gesture of despair. "I entirely forgot," she said. "I was going skating. Could it possibly wait till to-morrow?"
Frances West looked helplessly at Beatrice. "I'm sure I don't know," she said. "You told me that to-day was the time. I always depend on you to keep track."
Beatrice laughed gaily. "I'm so glad I happened in," she said. "It's such a lovely spectacle to see the methodical Dottie King trying to persuade the poetical and always-behind-time Frances to put off till to-morrow what she ought to have done day before yesterday. Come, Dottie, take off your coat and go to work."
"I'm sorry I'm always late," said Frances, sweetly. "I've decided to try to be on time now that we've got our new rugs and these lovely green curtains. So I bought a calendar pad and put down my date for reading proof with you last week, when you first reminded me of it."
Dorothy had followed Beatrice's instruction to take off her coat. Now she sat down resignedly before the writing-table, pulled a long strip of printer's proof off the spindle, and dipped her pen in the ink, ready for work. "How do you happen to be here, Bess?" she asked.
"Came to read my mail," said Beatrice. "Some of the best exchanges are out about this time in the month. When you didn't come, I tried to correct proof with Frances, but we couldn't either of us remember the printers' marks; and our Webster's dictionary, that has them in the back, got lost in the shuffle of house-cleaning last vacation."
"Then if the dictionary is lost, you must stay," said Dorothy, "because I can correct proof, but I can't spell, and neither can Frances. Come, Frances, here's the copy for you to read."
Frances West's voice had a peculiarly charming quality, and her manner of reading was so absorbed and sympathetic that she never failed to interest her auditors; so that even the mechanical drudgery of correcting proof was endurable with her help. The work went on rapidly, Dorothy bending over the long printers' galleys, adding mysterious little marks here and there in the wide margins, Frances reading as expressively as though she were doing her best to entertain Beatrice Egerton, who curled herself up on the window-seat, listened, made flippant comments, perused her exchanges when the "Argus" articles did not interest her, and when appealed to by Dorothy, acted as substitute for the missing Webster's dictionary.
"Well, that's over," said Dorothy, at last, straightening in her chair and stretching out her cramped arms over her head. "Next month will be Laura Dale's turn again. I wonder if she'll do it."
"Poor Dottie!" mimicked Beatrice. "'Could you do it just once more? I can't seem to learn the marks.' That's what she'll say. You shouldn't be so capable, Dottie, and then you could go skating afternoons instead of doing your own work and the assistant business manager's too."