Joan was out in the grassy yard, one morning, playing a game of croquet with Em, the cat. Joan did the playing for both herself and her opponent, who stalked about with a very disinterested air. Joan was playing with one eye on the Journal office. Suddenly Chub rapped on the window and called her over.
When she reached the Journal office, Chub was standing outside one of the phone booths, waving the telephone receiver at her. “It’s for you.”
Joan went inside the airless booth—still partly filled with smoke because one of the men of the staff had been in there recently. The booth had penciled numbers all over the woodwork. That list of numbers in one corner were those of the undertakers. Tim let her call them once in awhile, when he was pretty sure there were no deaths, and had instructed her to call him to the phone if there were any to be reported. Joan had learned to know the different voices at the other end of each number. She did not like that part of the cub’s job. It seemed so cold-blooded to ask, “Anything for the Journal?” She was always relieved to have the politely mournful voice say, “No, nothing to-day.”
“Listen, Jo,” it was Tim at the other end of the wire. His voice sounded excited. “I’m stuck out here in Baiting Town, covering a Lodge picnic, and I can’t get back in time. I just realized that I’ve let a mistake go through. It’s that story about the charity play. I wrote it up from the dress rehearsal yesterday morning. It was to come off last night, but the leading lady came down with tonsillitis and it’s been postponed. So kill the story for me, won’t you? Grab it off the hook, if it hasn’t been set.”
Kill it! That had a horrible sound, but that meant only voiding the story—throwing it out. She hoped it hadn’t really got into print, for then they would have to stop the presses. That would be dreadful. Chub had told her once that it cost the Journal a great deal of time, expense and labor to stop the presses. But it would have to be done. The paper couldn’t come out with a long story about a play that had not come off. Tim had been so proud of that play assignment, too. “Give me about a column on this,” the editor had said and had consented to Tim’s attending the dress rehearsal in order to have the story all set up, ready to come out on the heels of the performance.
Joan slammed down the receiver and dashed through the swinging door to the composing room. She went straight to the big hook where the day’s copy hung and began thumbing through it. As she stood there, she became aware of some sort of confusion going on in the proofreader’s corner. He and Mack seemed to be having an argument.
Dummy could argue, though he seldom did. It was too much trouble for any one to carry on his part in writing. Mack would write something, Dummy would read the pad, and he would write. Mack would write again. Then Dummy would merely point to an item already written on his pad. This seemed to provoke Mack even more, for he would have to write new arguments.
Joan had gone through all the stories on the hook and had not found the one about the charity play. As she started over again to look once more, she glanced back at the two men over in the corner.
Dummy was beginning to write something, asserting whatever it was with fierce strokes of his pencil. Mack, reading as Dummy wrote, seemed crosser than ever and grabbed Dummy’s pencil. This infuriated the proofreader, and Joan did not wonder. To have his pencil taken away from him like that! Why, that was as if some one seized your tongue and held it so you could not speak.
Well, the story wasn’t here. She’d have to ask Dummy what happened to it. Maybe he had not read proof on it yet.