“Too close,” agreed Helen, who was breathless from their dash.
“Had to make it, though,” added Tom, “or we’d have been stranded here flat broke with the next train for home Monday night.”
“Don’t worry about something that didn’t happen,” Helen said. “I’ve enjoyed every minute of our trip and we’re all ready now to start our expansion program for the Herald in earnest.”
Adding two more pages of home print to the paper meant more work than either Tom or Helen had realized. There was more news to be written and more ads to be set and another run to be made on the press.
With early June at hand the summer season at the resorts on the lower end of Lake Dubar got under way and Helen resolved to make a trip at least once a week and run a column or two of personals about people coming and going. She also gave liberal space to the good roads election in July, stressing the value the paved scenic highway would be to Rolfe.
The two pages of ready-print arrived on Tuesday and Tom and Helen were delighted with the appearance of the comic page and the feature page for women readers.
“We’ll have the snappiest looking paper in the county,” chuckled Tom. “Dad won’t know the old paper when he sees this week’s issue.”
The county agent kept his promise to send them at least a column of farm news and Helen made it a point to gather all she could while Tom went to the county seat Tuesday morning and solicited ads for the page. The result was a well-balanced page, half ads and half news. Careful solicitation of home town merchants also brought additional ads and when they made up the last two pages Thursday noon they felt the extra work which increasing the size of the paper meant was more than repaid in extra advertising.
“I’m printing a number of extra copies this week,” explained Tom. “There are lots of people around here who ought to take the Herald. With our expansion program we may pick up some extra subscriptions and we might get a chance at the county printing.”
“Tom!” exclaimed Helen. “Do you really think we might get to be an official county paper.”