“I stopped at Nixon’s desk and he gave me my beat.” Tim pulled a scrap of yellow paper from his pocket.
“What is your beat?” Joan squirmed to see.
He let her read:
Railway Station
Flower Shops
Library
Post Office
“I have to go round there every day and scare up news,” he said. “The rest of the time, I’ll be busy doing obits and rewrites.” (That meant obituary notices and articles rewritten from other newspapers.)
Joan gazed at him over the plates and things she was carrying into the china closet. She always just drained them, and they were dry now. “And can I go with you?”
“On my beat?” came the scandalized echo. “I should say not!”