It was wonderful having Tim decent to her, Joan thought as she flew to do his bidding. Would he always be this agreeable, now that he was happy and important over having a job? She hoped so.
After supper, Joan sat on the side steps and listened to the drone of the humming bird that visited the honeysuckle vines, and looked up at the stars above the Journal office roof.
“To-morrow, I start my job,” she thought. She really could not have been more interested if she herself, instead of Tim, were to report at the Journal at eight o’clock in the morning.
Soon, there was a little jingle behind her. It was Tim, putting out the milk bottle, with its pennies and nickels, for Mother—also a signal that Joan should come on to bed.
As she went through the dining room to the stairs, a slim tan booklet lying there on the dining room table caught her eye. It was entitled Journal Style, and was a little pamphlet on what a cub should and should not do. She had never seen a copy of it before. She supposed they were just given to the new men and that was why. That was what Tim had been studying that afternoon up in his room, and this evening, too, probably while she sat on the steps.
She opened it. “The lead of every story should answer, if possible, the questions: Who? What? Where? When? and How?”
Why, this was just exactly what she wanted! She hooked one of the chairs up to the table with her foot and began to read.
About an hour later, Mother’s voice called her. “Joan, aren’t you ever coming up to bed?”
She left the book where she had found it, and stumbled up the stairs, trying to remember all the hints to reporters she had read.
To-morrow. The Job! That reminded her of Chub’s mystery. What could he mean, and when would he tell her?