So he had to be told. “The boy’s had the grace to admit that he made it this time,” finished up Mr. Nixon. He sounded as though he still believed that Tim had made the first mistake, too—the one about the deserted children.
“Perhaps he will learn more from the mistake than they themselves are worth,” Uncle John said. “But be careful, Tim.”
Be careful! He would have to be now, Joan realized. She was more puzzled than ever. Even if Tim had made this mistake, she knew she hadn’t written Mr. Johnson’s name in that other story. She’d have to stick around the office even more than ever now to be ready to help Tim. It was too bad that the only time he had really let her help, that terrible mistake had had to happen. She supposed he was afraid to trust her again. Well, she’d hang around anyway to be on hand if he did want her.
“Say, I’m in an awful rush,” Tim said one afternoon. He was always in a rush, it seemed. “Can you look up the stuff for the Ten Years Ago column?”
It was her chance, the first really big thing he had asked her to do since he allowed her to type that story about the deserted children. Of course, he had let her do little things, like looking up telephone numbers and checking initials.
She’d be extra careful, she resolved, as she picked up Em, who was curled up for a nap on the coverless dictionary. Then she lifted off the dictionary and tugged at the heavy, bound file.
Every day the Journal carried a few items culled from these files. It was part of Tim’s work to pick out those which he thought would interest the present readers of the Journal, and to copy them off verbatim. The beginning of this column was always the same—the type was always left set up in the forms. It said, “The following article was printed in the issue of the Plainfield Evening Journal for June—19—” and then came the date, ten years ago. Joan loved the old files; she liked to pore over the yellow pages and laugh at the queer fashions that were in vogue in the fifteen and twenty years ago numbers—long skirts that trailed on the ground, veils and funny hats. Why, Mother had a queer old silk blouse up in the attic, almost like that picture.
She learned to pick out items about prominent men—men who had not been so prominent ten years ago. Some of the issues were as interesting as stories, real stories, not just news ones. Then she’d type them off, so very carefully.
“Those old files are full of good stories,” Betty told her. “Don’t you know that half of the authors nowadays get their plots from newspaper clippings?”
“Do they?” Joan was interested.