“Well, in a way, it is,” he admitted. “But reporting a fire is not always fun. There’re too often deaths and accidents to write up, too, with a fire story.”
“That’s so,” answered Joan, soberly.
“Fires are like bananas—they come in bunches,” said the old reporter.
Joan laughed. “Cookie, remember, just the other day, you promised to tell us some of your experiences on the New York newspaper. Can’t you do it, now?”
“Um—I guess so.” Cookie glanced out of the corner of his eye at the editor. But Mr. Nixon was totally absorbed in retying the strings on the baby’s frilly bonnet. He was clumsy about it, but he would not let his wife help him.
Chub and Joan leaned near Cookie. His spotted vest smelled of stale tobacco, but they did not mind.
“Well, anything to oblige and help a future newspaper reporter,” he chuckled. “This happened a good many years ago, when I was on the New York Banner. I started as a cub, you know, but inside of a year I was doing really decent stories. No more obits for me. Then, one day, the editor called me to the desk and said he was going to send me out on the Vanderflip wedding story. Well, can you imagine what that meant to me?”
“Was it a big wedding?” Joan did not know what answer Cookie expected.
“Was it? The wedding of Vanderflip’s only son to a girl as rich as she was pretty? Oh, rats, I’m forgetting that all this was over ten years ago. You couldn’t remember. But it was the biggest wedding St. Thomas’ had seen in many a day. I didn’t write up the ceremony—understand, the society editors did that. But I was to trail along when the wedding party left on the honeymoon, which was to be a hunting trip to Canada. I was to send back a story every day—a good long one, too, for New York would eat up all the details it could get.
“Well, I sleuthed those folks within an inch of their lives. It was all right till we got to the lodge. I found it one of those glorified camps, deep in the heart of the woods, on a private lake, and nowhere for me to park within hiking distance. What did I do but apply for the job of chore boy at that camp—and got it! I wasn’t much good as a chore boy, but fortunately, there wasn’t a lot to do—take care of the boats and canoes, and be generally useful. My job gave me plenty of opportunity for close-hand stories. But between the work and writing up the stuff on my portable typewriter up in my little shack way off in the woods by itself, I was pretty tired at night, and that’s how I happened to miss the fox hunt.”