Helen had the editorial office thoroughly cleaned by one o’clock and sat down in her father’s swivel chair to rest. Tom called in from the back room.
“You’d better plan your editorial work for the week,” he said. “I want to run the Linotype every afternoon and you’ll have to have copy for me.”
“What do you want first?” said Helen.
“Better get the editorials ready today,” he replied. “They don’t have to be absolutely spot copy. Dad wrote the first column himself and then clipped a column or a column and a half from nearby papers.”
“I’ll get at it right away,” said Helen. “The exchanges for last week are on the desk. After I’ve gone through them I’ll write my own editorials.”
“Better have one about Dad going away,” said Tom and there was a queer catch in his voice.
Helen did not answer for her eyes filled with a strange mist and her throat suddenly felt dry and full.
Their father’s departure for the southwest had left a great void in their home life but Helen knew they would have to make the best of it. She was determined that their efforts on the Herald be successful.
Helen turned to the stack of exchanges which were on the desk and opened the editorial page of the first one. She was a rapid reader and she scanned paper after paper in quest of editorials which would interest readers of the Herald. When she found one she snipped it out with a handy pair of scissors and pasted it on a sheet of copy paper. Six or seven were needed for the Herald’s editorial page and it took her half an hour to get enough. With the clipped editorials pasted and new heads written on them, Helen turned to the typewriter to write the editorials for the column which her father was accustomed to fill with his own comments on current subjects.
Helen had stacked the copypaper in a neat pile on the desk and she took a sheet and rolled it into the typewriter. She had taken a commercial course the first semester and her mastery of the touch system of typing was to stand her in good stead for her work as editor of the Herald.