There was news again next morning at the watch factory. Tessie of the old days had never needed to depend on the other girls for the latest bit of gossip. Her alert eye and quick ear had always caught it first. But of late she had led a cloistered existence, indifferent to the world about her. The Chippewa Courier went into the newspaper pile behind the kitchen door without a glance from Tessie's incurious eye.
She was late this morning. As she sat down at the bench and fitted her glass in her eye the chatter of the others, pitched in the high key of unusual excitement, penetrated even her listlessness.
"An' they say she never screeched or fainted or anything. She stood there, kind of quiet, lookin' straight ahead, and then all of a sudden she ran to her pa—"
"Both comin' at once, like that—"
"I feel sorry for her. She never did anything to me. She—"
Tessie spoke, her voice penetrating the staccato fragments all about her and gathering them into a whole. "Say, who's the heroine of this picture? Somebody flash me a cut-in so I can kinda follow the story. I come in in the middle of the reel, I guess."
They turned on her with the unlovely eagerness of those who have ugly news to tell. They all spoke at once, in short sentences, their voices high with the note of hysteria.
"Angie Hatton's beau was killed—"
"They say his aireoplane fell ten thousan' feet—"
"The news come only last evenin' about eight—"