“I like a spirit of independence,” continued Peter to himself. “Wish she hadn’t quite so much of it. Wonder where she got it from.”
The situation was becoming more serious to Peter than he cared to admit. For day by day, in spite of her tyrannies, Tommy was growing more and more indispensable to Peter. Tommy was the first audience that for thirty years had laughed at Peter’s jokes; Tommy was the first public that for thirty years had been convinced that Peter was the most brilliant journalist in Fleet Street; Tommy was the first anxiety that for thirty years had rendered it needful that Peter each night should mount stealthily the creaking stairs, steal with shaded candle to a bedside. If only Tommy wouldn’t “do” for him! If only she could be persuaded to “do” something else.
Another happy thought occurred to Peter.
“Tommy—I mean Jane,” said Peter, “I know what I’ll do with you.”
“What’s the game now?”
“I’ll make a journalist of you.”
“Don’t talk rot.”
“It isn’t rot. Besides, I won’t have you answer me like that. As a Devil—that means, Tommy, the unseen person in the background that helps a journalist to do his work—you would be invaluable to me. It would pay me, Tommy—pay me very handsomely. I should make money out of you.”
This appeared to be an argument that Tommy understood. Peter, with secret delight, noticed that the chin retained its normal level.
“I did help a chap to sell papers, once,” remembered Tommy; “he said I was fly at it.”