And when, on Dolly leaving school, the two girls, lost without the school paper, resolved to bring out a girls’ magazine, a secluded room for editorial purposes was more than ever necessary.
Mary, coming in to lay the lunch-cloth, would be met by an agonized entreaty from the editors for just ten more minutes, and the big table was always so [235] ]littered up with stacks of paper, that Mary, impressed by the business-like look, generally yielded, and lunch was in consequence frequently half-an-hour late.
Or an early afternoon visitor would be shown into the drawing-room just in time to see a girl rise up from the floor with startled eyes, hastily gather up the papers from the sofa-table, and beat a hurried retreat.
Sometimes the two wrote in their bedrooms.
Phyl had a tiny room to herself, but Dolly and Weenie slept together. Phyl had an old writing-table against one wall, and just the other side of the partition stood Dolly’s wash-stand.
And no one knew how often Phyl had to spring up from her work, and with wrathful eyes seek the neighbouring apartment, to request Dolly to “stop that wretched tapping,” for Dolly had a vexatious habit, in moments when words failed her, of sitting with dreamy eyes in front of her wash-stand and tap, tapping at the wall with her idle pen.
And no one knew how often Dolly had to get up and move her chair to allow Weenie to pass into the room. It was a small room, and the furniture almost filled it; when the young editor was seated on her chair there was not one inch of space for any one to pass to one part of the room, for the big bed reached just to the chair.
Dolly used to groan when she heard Weenie coming.
[236]
]“Look here, Weenie, this is the fifth time this morning,” she would say, exasperated, “you can’t come past me again.”
“Oh, can’t I?” Weenie would retort; “I want something out of my drawer, and I’m going to have it.”