The man still glared at her. “Young woman, do you know that I’m part owner of this paper with your Uncle John—the general manager is your uncle, isn’t he?—and that I’m a lifelong friend and chief backer of the Journal’s candidate for the coming election?”
“Oh, dear!” Joan almost sobbed. “I knew you lived out on North Market Street, so I imagined you must be somebody, but I never dreamed you were all that!”
The bulldog man’s eyes actually twinkled and the yellow cane was still.
“Well, I am,” he snapped, “all that. Of course, you’re too young to understand about politics, but if you’re big enough to help around a newspaper office, you must know how disastrous it is to have a mistake like this come out in the paper.” He waggled the newspaper again.
“Oh, I do!” breathed Joan, fervently.
“It’s going to cost this young man his job, I’m afraid.” Mr. Johnson turned his head slightly toward Tim. Her brother’s face was white.
“Oh, no, please!” beseeched the girl. “It wasn’t his fault, at all. I did it, so why should he lose his job? He needs the money so badly for college this fall.” Why, it’d be terrible to have Tim lose his job.
Tim gave her a look that said, “You didn’t need to say that.”
“But your brother admits he read the copy over, after you’d typed it.” Mr. Johnson leaned over his cane. “First off, I suspected something crooked, but when I found out just a kid had made the mistake.... Your brother did read it over, didn’t he?”
Joan nodded dumbly. Then her mind, in its wretchedness, went back to the mystery. “But, Mr. Johnson,” she began, unmindful of Tim’s watchful eyes, “don’t you think that when we both read the story over, it’s mighty queer that it had a mistake like that in it, and neither of us saw it?”