“It ain’t. Got it out of a book,” confessed the boy. “I write to Her, too,” he added happily. “She ast me to.”
“What does she think of your work?” inquired the Boss gravely.
“I ain’t heard from Her since I began gettin’ my stuff in the paper. But I guess She likes the paper all right. She tells me in most every letter what a big thing it is to help make a noospaper.”
“Does She? What else does She say?”
“I dunno.” The boy lost himself in thought. “It’s just a little here an’ a little there. She never says much; not any one time. But you can see She thinks a lot of the Business.”
“Now, you would n’t suppose that, would you?” said the artful Jeremy, feeding his hunger for the mere, dear memory of her brought back and made real by speech. “It must be because you told her you were going to be a newspaper man.”
“That’s it. She thinks it’s like being a preacher, only more so. She says you must n’t ever be mean or give away a friend or take advantage of having a noospaper to write for. An’ She says you got to always write what you honest-to-God think, because it’s yella to do the other thing. I guess She would n’t stand for a fake, not for a second! I bet She’d take the hide off’n some o’ them—o’ those Record guys. An’ She says the hardest thing ’ll be some time when there’s somethin’ a fella oughta write an’ that ’ll get him in wrong if he does write it, for him not to lay down an’ quit on it. An’ She says never, never to be afraid o’ your job, because that makes the job your boss an’ not you the job’s boss. An’ She says unless a guy can’t trust himself nobuddy can trust him an’ be safe, no matter how much they want to. I guess that’s about all right! Ain’t it, Boss?”
“It’s about all right, Buddy,” said Jeremy with an effort. That final bit of philosophy had stabbed.
After the presses had stopped and the offices had emptied, that evening, the editor of The Guardian sat at his desk with the little photograph of Marcia Ames before him. He looked into the frank and radiant face; into the eyes that met the world and its perplexities so steadily, with so pure and single-minded a challenge.
“You did n’t ask much, did you, my dear!” he said softly to the picture. “You only asked that I should be straight and honest; not a shifter and a coward. Well, it was too much. Buddy may do better. I’ll help him as far as I can. That’s a promise, my dear.”