“We’ve called on the biggest gossips we could find,” called Hannah cheerfully, as Max came in, “and I’ve got at least ten items.” She showed a note-book which slipped inside her card-case.
“She was dreadful!” said Catherine. “She would stop and make notes before we had got a block away from the house, for fear she would forget, and asked questions that made me hold my breath.”
“Well,” Hannah defended herself. “I wanted details. I don’t want just little bare sentences. And Catherine was just as bad. She took such an interest in the new people who had moved in next door to the Galleghers’, that I know the Gallegher girls were almost scandalized.”
Max ran his eye over Hannah’s list of news items approvingly. “That’s a fine start. Can’t you do some more calls?”
Catherine shook her head. “No, we don’t know 252 any more of the very gossippy kind, but we are going to a tea at Dot’s, and we’ll make a society note of that. How are the editorials coming?”
Max made a wry face. “I declare, I’m pretty nearly stumped. At college there always seemed to be a lot of vital matters to discuss. But here there isn’t anything after a little spiel on the crops and a paragraph on politics. I don’t dare go in heavy there, for I’m not sure just what Morse’s position is, and don’t want to commit him. I can’t think of any public enterprise to work up, or any nuisance to be suppressed.”
“I wish you’d suppress mosquitoes and flies,” said Hannah, brushing away one of the latter insects, and petting a swollen place on her wrist.
“Why not write an editorial on it?” suggested Catherine. “You can give him material to read, can’t you, Algernon?”
Algernon came over to the corner where the three were talking in tones fitting a library.
“What’s that? O, indeed, yes,” and the boy’s face lightened with pleasure as he found some one really desiring information of a worthy nature. “I’ll get you something right away. There was an article in a last month’s magazine.”