“Just copying?” Joan queried. “Oh, Tim, let me do it.”
“Think you can?” Tim glanced around the office. Mr. Nixon was out to lunch, or he would have refused right off.
“Of course,” Joan assured him. “I’ve often copied lists of guests for Miss Betty. You know, sometimes folks write up their own parties and lots of the county correspondents write in longhand. She lets me copy them for her.”
“I didn’t know that.” Tim gave her his chair. “Well, go ahead. That typewriter makes me nervous. Some of the letters don’t hit. The comma’s nothing but a tail. See? It doesn’t write the dot part at all. You’d think I’d rate a better typewriter than this old thrashing machine.”
Joan made no reply. She was too thrilled to speak—to think of helping Tim! She must do her best and not make any mistakes. She smoothed out the copy sheet and placed it on the sliding board.
“Albert Jackson of—” her fingers struck the keys slowly but surely.
When she finished the sheet, Tim read it over and placed it on Mack’s desk. He read copy while Nixon was out at lunch, rather than let the work pile up.
The sport editor’s face was always smile-lit, like that of an æsthetic dancer. He teased every one. When Gertie from the front office walked through, with stacks of yellow ads in her hands, he had a tantalizing remark ready for her. He started the rumor in the office that Gertie was making love openly and loudly to Dummy’s silent back.
Joan went back to the Journal after lunch to bask in the last-minute rush, just before the paper was locked up, or “put to bed”—that last, breathless pause to see whether anything big is going to break before the paper is locked into the forms. She was glad school was over—suppose she’d have had to miss all this excitement of Tim’s job!
She and Chub went out into the press room again and she grabbed another folded newspaper, damp with fresh ink, from the press. She turned the pages, the narrow strips of cut edges peeling away from them as she opened out the paper. There was the story she’d typed—on the back page, among the obituary notices. It was almost as though she herself had written it. Why, the name was wrong. Instead of starting “Albert Jackson,” as she had written it, the story began, “Albert Johnson of North Market Street—” a different name and address.