“Chub apologized all over the place, ’n’ everything,” put in Gertie, “but he couldn’t make an impression until he came in—”
“Judge Hal,” Chub explained. “He was just back from Dayton and found out they were down here. Hadn’t seen the picture, but only laughed about it, even when I had to admit that I was the ‘queer old character’ who Mrs. King said hooked it off the mantel. It seems he has a soft spot in his heart for reporters, ’cause he used to be editor of his college mag., and knows how mistakes happen. He was a prince, all right! He said you jumped all over him yesterday and he’d thought over all you’d said, and decided you were right, and that it was mostly their own fault for not letting the paper have the picture. Well, somehow or other, he pacified them and took ’em home.”
And they had tried so hard to help Tim. But to get out of it all so nicely!
“He even got her to promise to give us her latest picture,” he went on. “He said you were such a spunky kid asking for it, and if no one knew anything but them, it didn’t need to be mentioned that the wrong picture was used. They’re both going to pose for Lefty, this afternoon, they promised.”
Both of them! A special photo with “... by the Staff Photographer” printed underneath. That would be a real scoop for the Journal. Usually, the society people of Plainfield would smash Lefty’s camera rather than pose before it.
Gertie was busy now, taking an ad for a customer who’d come in. Chub whispered above the thump, thump of the stamp he was marking on the ad sheets, “Well, Jo, there’s another mistake we couldn’t blame on Dummy. Maybe those others were real ones, too.”
But Joan knew that the story she had typed had been changed.
CHAPTER IX
A MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE
Tim was being careful these days. His whole job depended on his accuracy. The editor had said to Mack when he commissioned the sport editor once to read copy, “You have to watch Martin’s stuff. He’s apt to make mistakes.”
Tim had made but one mistake, though Joan could not prove it. So he had to be extra careful.