Mrs. Martin considered. “Well, if you want to,” she decided. “It’s the lesser of two evils, I guess. Maybe having Tommy here will keep you from running over to the Journal so much. But you and Amy will have to take charge of him. I’ve planned to put up preserves this week.”
“We will,” promised Joan. Amy would adore to help. Amy didn’t know much about newspapers, but she knew a lot about babies. She had played dolls till she was a big girl. Joan had seldom played with dolls even when she was small. Playing about under the desks in the Journal office, using the discarded bits of lead plate for blocks had been more fun than dolls to young Joan. But now—a real baby! She’d like that!
Tommy was installed that very afternoon.
Tommy-by-the-Day, Chub named him when Joan explained to the Journal staff through the open windows that Tommy was to be at her house by the day, and that his mother would bring him early in the morning and call for him after work.
“Me, Tommy-by-the-Day” the baby echoed, patting his chest with one pudgy hand.
While he took his nap, Joan stole off to the Journal, and found Tim hard at work over the Day Nursery story. When he was called into one of the phone booths, she read what he had written. His story covered the facts, but it was stiff and journalistic, somehow. It did not give half an idea how cute Tommy really was. As she stared at the yellow page, Joan was seized with such an amazing inspiration that she trembled, just thinking of it. Oh, she wouldn’t dare do it!
She would. Tim couldn’t do much but scold. She rolled his story out of the machine, inserted another sheet and began to type. She was not used to composing on the typewriter and in her worry and hurry, her fingers struck the wrong keys, but the result was readable. She used all of Tim’s facts in the story, but by merely changing a phrase of his now and then and sticking in a few of her own, she managed to capture all the adorable neediness of that little scamp of a Tommy.
Tim came and shooed her off when she was writing in the middle of it, writing in the heat of creation. Would he be mad?
“What’s the big idea?” he sputtered, but not very loudly, for he was reading her story. “Oh, I see, well—I may use some of your ideas, kid. They’re not half bad.” But Joan suddenly turned shy and fled. Would he kill her?
When Tim came home after work, Tommy was sitting up on the big, red dictionary eating his early supper of rice, milk, and applesauce.