Joan decided to wander about a bit by herself, while the pictures were being taken. She strolled back into the cottage, without the others missing her. As she ventured along she suddenly heard a swish, swish, and looking over to the corner of the living room, she spied a boy of about her own age, kneeling beside a pail of soapy, gray water, scrubbing the floor.
“O gosh!” He jumped to his feet. His face got red. “I—I—” he could do nothing but stutter and seemed overcome with embarrassment. He was so different from Chub, who was plump and had red hair and freckles. This boy was tall and lanky, with a shock of very light hair and big blue eyes. He stared down at the scrub brush in his rough, red hands. “I—I’m on the clean-up crew this week,” he said.
“I came with my brother—he’s a cub reporter—and the photographer to take pictures of the band boys,” Joan explained. “Their uniforms are nice.” She could not help but compare them with the blue overalls and faded shirt that he was wearing. He was barefooted, too.
“Ye-ah. They’re nice. We wear uniforms, too—brown ones with brass buttons.”
He seemed loath to turn back to his work while she was there, so she turned and started on. “Say,” he called after her, “do me a favor? Tell me something. Do you know much about a newspaper?”
Did she? When she had lived next to one all her life! She nodded, too surprised at his question to speak.
“Well,” he went on, “do you know where I could go to school to study running a linotype machine?”
Joan didn’t know. “But I’ll find out and write you,” she promised. He seemed to want to know so badly!
Instantly, his thin face lighted up. “Gosh, would you? I’d sure like to get a letter. The other fellers do, sometimes, but I never have. Just address it, ‘Alex White,’ and I’ll get it.”
“Don’t your parents write you?” Joan was curious.