Several heads bent above typewriters raised long enough to call across a word of greeting. Charley Munns, City Editor of the Calgary Blizzard, his desk heaped high with an amazing mass of papers, glanced up with a detached query in his harassed young blue eyes.
“Well?”
Mallison proceeded to untie the string about his package. Munns glanced at the first of the pictures, jerked his chin out and looked again. Mallison showed the second and then, slowly, the third. Munns had pushed back the heap of papers. Pipe in hand, tired young blue eyes suddenly bright and alert, he examined the remarkable sketches. An interested group had gathered at the back of the city editor’s chair, and the sketches passed from hand to hand. Mallison who had, without words, merely laid the package of sketches before his city editor, continued reticent when questioned by the staff.
“Whose work was it? Where had he got them? Had they been exhibited? What were they doing in Calgary?” and so forth.
Oh, they were the work of a friend of his. Didn’t matter who. None of them knew his name. No, they hadn’t been exhibited.
Then he sat him down by the “Chief’s” desk, hugged his chin, and stared gloomily before him. The men were back at their desks, and Munns signed some slips, and then turned his attention back to his reporter.
“Good work. Typical Stoneys, eh? Don’t know who your friend is, Dunc, but it is worth two sticks—more if you’re personally interested. By the way, about P. D.? How’d you come out?”
The city editor had picked up again one of the sketches and was examining it interestedly. It was of a young girl, standing on the top of a hill, her horse, reins dropped, behind her, its mane blowing in the wind. She was in breeks, with a boy’s riding boots and her sweater was a bright scarlet. On her head was a black velvet tam. Something in the wide-eyed dreaming look of the girl, as if she were gazing across over an immense distance, seeing probably hills yet higher than the one on which she stood, with the clear blue skies as her only background, held the attention of the jaded city editor.
“That’s really great. Fine! Who’s the girl, by the way?”
“Hilda McPherson.”