“Oh—some time,” he drawled, as he ambled off.
Another member of the Journal tribe sauntered up. It was Bossy, the colored janitor. His steel-rimmed spectacles gave his dark face an owlish look. He sniffed at Betty’s rose. “Hit sho looks just like an artificial one, don’t hit now?” he asked, amiably.
There was no squelching Bossy. He was a great talker and every one let him ramble on. He had been the janitor so long that he felt almost as though he owned the paper. No one felt it more keenly when the Journal was “scooped” by the Star, than did this same, good-natured Bossy. He prided himself that he read every word in the Journal every day.
“Your brother gwine be a newspaper reporter, dat what?” He turned to Joan. “Well, he’ll hab to be careful and not make no mistakes. De Journal got to be careful. Mistakes is bad. Bossy knows.” He muttered something to himself.
Tim came back into the office now, with a rather disgusted look on his face, and began pounding his typewriter keys, for all the world like a provoked small boy doing his detested piano practice. Joan went over and glanced over his shoulder at what he was writing. It was a short article asking for cast-off baby things, toys and clothing for the babies of the crowded-to-overflowing day nursery on Grove Street. Of course, Tim would hate a “sissy” assignment like that, but Joan would have enjoyed seeing all the babies and having the matron tell her of the things recently donated.
When he finished that story, he started on the rewrites, stories from the Morning Star dished up in a different style. Joan glanced at his desk. It was cluttered like a real reporter’s. The whole editorial office was untidy. The staff seldom used the tall, green metal wastebasket in the corner. They wadded up papers and aimed at it. Chub often said, “The first person to hit the wastebasket around here will be fired.”
Joan noticed that Tim had tacked a slip of yellow copy paper on the wall just above his typewriter. It read, in the editor’s handwriting:
Martin—
Call Undertakers twice a day, at 9:30 and 1:15.
Call Medical Examiner at the same time.