“This afternoon,” broke in Lionel eagerly, and his friend the reporter nodded.
“So soon? Could it be arranged?”
“Yes, indeed. Easily—if at all.”
The lady laughed. “You newspaper people take my breath away with your promptness. I’m so used to thinking things over a long while. But I like it, I like it. I feel waked up by it.”
“We newspaper folk don’t have much time to ‘think over’ anything, do we, Tows?” asked the gentleman of his fellow-laborer; and the lad flushed with delight at this gay acceptance of himself into the “force.”
“No. Say, Miss Lucy, while we’re waiting for that man, couldn’t I run down to the store and telephone for the sleighs?”
“You? You—you, child? Could you do that?”
“Of course. Why not?”
“You—are so young.”
“Oh, I’ve been around!” said the newsboy, airily.