"Oh, dear!" murmured the girl. "Maybe it's even worse than Makepiece reported."
"Hardly," broke in Nelson Haley, quickly. "He intimated that your father was surely dead. But this friend of yours at Juarez says any news at all is good news."
"Keep your heart up, Miss," urged the telegraph operator. "And do tell me a little something about yourself, so that I can satisfy these insistent newspapers."
"Oh, dear, me! I don't want to get into the newspapers," cried Janice, really disturbed by this possibility.
"But folks will be awfully interested in reading about you, Miss Day," urged the man; "and the newspapers are going to do more than anybody else for you and your father in this trouble. You may make sure of that."
But it was because of the operator's personal kindness that Janice submitted to the "interview." Nelson Haley entered into the spirit of the affair and wrote down Janice's personal history to date, just as briefly and clearly as the girl gave it under the operator's questioning. Young Haley added a few notes of his own, which he explained in the operator's ear before the latter tapped out his message to New York.
It was only when Janice saw the paper a few days later that she realized what, between them, the school-teacher and the telegraph operator had done. There, spread broadcast by the types, was the story of how Janice had come to Poketown alone, a brief picture of her loneliness without her father, something of the free reading-room Janice had been the means of establishing, and a description of the flight down the lake on the Fly-by-Night on Christmas morning, that she might gain further particulars of her father's fate.
It was the sort of human-interest story that newspaper readers enjoy; but Janice was almost ashamed to appear in public for several days thereafter!
However, this is ahead of our story.
The wait for further messages from the border was not so tedious, because of these incidents. By and by an answer came from the American consular agent at Cida, relayed from Juarez by Mr. Buchanan. The agent stated his doubt of the entire truth of John Makepiece's story. The man was notoriously a reckless character. It was believed that he himself had served with the Constitutionalist army in Mexico some months. Since appearing in Cida and telling his story to the Associated Press man, he had become intoxicated and was still in that state, so could not be interviewed for further particulars.