She crossed the street and opened the heavy door by leaning her weight against it. Tim was at the ticket window. The ticket agent was shaking his head, and Tim went on.
No news there, Joan guessed, as she, too, went across the sunny station and out the opposite door to where the express men were hauling trunks, and travelers were waiting for trains.
Back to Gay Street, through the musty-smelling Arcade, then Tim entered a small florist shop, crowded with flowers. Joan looked in the window. The girl at the counter reminded her of Gertie in the business office of the Journal. She was chewing gum, and as she talked to Tim, her hands were busy twisting short-stemmed pink roses onto tiny sticks of wood. Tim got his pencil and pad, and wrote leaning on the counter.
When Tim opened the door, a whiff of sweet flowers was wafted to Joan who was innocently gazing into the window of the baby shop next door.
Tim hurried on up toward the corner, brushing past two ragged children who stood by the curb, both of them crying. They might be “news,” thought Joan, but Tim was hurrying on. Joan took time to smile at the smaller child. Though she wore boy’s clothing, Joan could tell she was a girl by her mass of tangled, yellow curls. “What’s the matter, honey?” she asked.
The little girl hung her head and was too shy to answer, but the brother spoke up. “Mamma’s dead and papa’s gone,” he said.
Tim was up at the corner, now, going into the public library, and Joan hurried on. Maybe it wasn’t true anyway.
Joan stood behind a tall rack of out-of-town newspapers while she listened as Tim asked the stiff-backed, white-haired librarian, “Anything for the Journal to-day?” That must be the formula cub reporters used. But Miss Bird had said no, softly but surely, almost before he had the question asked.
Then, across the street to the post office. Joan, feeling safe in the revolving door, watched while Tim approached the stamp window. He was getting some news, for the clerk was talking to him.
Just then, a brisk business man of Plainfield, hurrying into the post office to mail a letter while the engine of his car chugged at the curb, banged into the section of the revolving door behind Joan with such force that she was sent twirling twice around the circle of the door, and in the dizziness of the unexpected spin, she shot out of the door—on the post office side, instead of the street side. Tim, leaving the stamp window and coming toward the door, bumped into her!