"Are you sure?" I asked, after the superior officer had disappeared. "I'd like—a raise."
He looked at me contemptuously.
"You don't know what the Consolidated Traction Company is, I suppose?" he asked.
My business on the paper was reporting art meetings at the Carnegie Library and donation affairs at settlement homes because the owner and publisher drank out of the same canteen with my grandfather—and my fellows on the staff called me behind my back their ornamental member.
"I do!" I bristled. "It's located at a greasy place, called Loomis—and it's something that makes the wheels go round."
He smiled.
"It certainly does in Oldburgh," he said. "It's the biggest thing we have, next to our own cotton mills and to think that they're threatening to take their doll-rags and move to Birmingham and leave us desolate!"
"Where the iron would be nearer?" I asked, and he fairly beamed.
"Sure! Say, if you know that much about the company's affairs, why don't you try for this assignment yourself?"
But I shook my head.