Mrs. Martin looked up from the oven where she had slipped in a cake, and smiled. “That’s nice.”
Joan sank down on a kitchen chair that was peeling its paint. “Mother, it’s wonderful!”
“Joan, don’t get so excited.” The oven door banged. “It’s not you that’s got the job.”
“I really feel as though it was, honest,” declared the girl. “You know, I’ve always dreamed of having a job on the Journal and now I have it—or rather Tim has, but it’s all in the family.”
“You should have been a boy, Jo,” Mrs. Martin made her oft-repeated remark. As it was, Joan’s dark, straight hair was always given a boyish bob, and there were some boyish freckles on her short nose, too. “Tim may be the image of his father, but you’re just the way he was, crazy about the newspaper. I don’t see what you see in it. Though I guess it has been better since John’s been managing it. But as soon as we can sell this house without a loss, we’ll move.”
“Mother!” Joan wouldn’t feel she were living without the Journal next door. But she didn’t take her mother’s words seriously. Mother was always talking vaguely of selling the house and had suggested it in earnest recently. The interest on the mortgage was high and being in a business block, it was hard to find a buyer. If she could retain it, until some one wanted it for business purposes, they might make a nice profit. But Plainfield was a slow-growing town. Uncle John advised holding it until some one wanted it for a business.
“Your poor father just slaved for that paper, and it never got him anywhere,” went on her mother. “I hope you get over the notion of being a reporter by the time you’re Tim’s age, and take up stenography.”
“Ugh.” Joan made a little face. “Office work—not me!”
No, she was going to be a reporter, no matter what. Hadn’t Daddy taught her to typewrite when she was only eleven, and didn’t even Tim think she was a “pretty good typist”? Daddy had always said she had a “nose for news,” too. She remembered feeling her pug nose speculatively the first time he said that, wondering what it meant. Her nose did turn up inquisitively. Now she knew, “nose for news” meant she had the natural curiosity that it took to make a good reporter.
Then the door opened and Tim came in, still wearing the broad grin with which he had left the Journal office.