“It—it’s really a bit draughty, Ted, these windy days,” she said apologetically. And indeed she owed several colds to the winds that whistled beneath and round the ill-fitting door and the window.
“You could easily hang something over them,” said Ted, “you’re so fond of draping everything.”
“And—and it really has a musty smell sometimes,” Phyl added, driven to bay. “See—there’s blue mould coming in patches everywhere on the walls from the last rains, our books are getting quite spoiled.”
Ted sniffed and peered about. “I don’t notice anything,” he said; “but of course there’s no accounting for finicky girls like you.”
“If they burnt coffee in the room they wouldn’t notice it,” Richie said; “that’s what old Adams always does after our chemistry.”
“Oh, go away,” said Phyl, exasperated, “we’re frightfully busy; everything has to be with the printer to-morrow, and there are Answers to Correspondents, and Fashions, and an editorial, and some poems to do yet.”
Richie and Ted melted away after a little more carping, and the harassed editors fell to work again.
[242]
]CHAPTER XXIII
ENTIRELY EDITORIAL
Their little paper had met with a fair amount of success, but they had both grown thin with the worry of it.
The printer of their School Magazine had undertaken to print and publish this new one for twenty-five pounds a month. He was interested in the little venture, and really gave the editors thicker paper, better type, and handsomer headlines than he could afford for the sum. They would easily get advertisements to pay his charge, he told them, and the circulation would pay themselves.