There was a pause. Miss Martin thoughtfully tapped her forehead with a pencil.
"I don't think it would be good for Johnnie to go down to Eden and put up with Penton," she interjected, "they're too much alike."
"Ally Merton is in New York," Galusha Siddon informed me. "He's working on the Express. He wants you to run down and see him."
Merton had come to New York the year before, to work on the Express. Mackworth had gotten him the job. Ally was as meticulously dressed as ever. His eyes swept me from head to foot, with an instinctive glance of appraisal, as he shook hands.
"Come on up on the roof. The paper wants a photo of you ... to go with a story I'm writing about you."
I rather resented all my friends' way of talking to me, as if I were a child to be discussed, ordered about, and disposed of. But I humoured them by playing up to their patronising spirit ... even playing horse with them continually on the sly, and having lots of fun that they didn't suspect.
The next morning I was in the office of the Independent, visiting with the literary editor, good old Dr. William Hayes Ward. He was a man of eighty years ... a scholar in English and the Greek and Latin classics....