Paul and the Printing Press

by Sara Ware Bassett

While Mr. Carter sat in his editorial office and thus reflected on his many business ventures Paul Cameron was also sitting in his editorial domain thinking intently.

The hundred-dollar deficit in the school treasury bothered him more than he was willing to admit. It was, of course, quite possible for him to repair the error—for he was convinced an error in the March Hare's bookkeeping had caused the shortage. A bill of a hundred dollars must have been paid and not recorded. Melville Carter had never had actual experience in keeping accounts, therefore was it so surprising that he had inadvertently made a mistake? Perhaps he was not so capable of handling money and keeping it straight as the class had thought when they had elected him to his post of business manager. Paying bills and rigorously noting down every expenditure was no easy task. It was a thankless job, anyway—the least interesting of any of the positions on the paper, and one that entailed more work than most. To kick at Mel would be rank ingratitude. It was not likely he had made a mess of things wittingly. Therefore the only alternative, since neither Mel's pride nor his own would permit them to confess to the muddle, was to pay the outstanding bill and slip the rest of the cash as quietly as possible into the bank.

How strange it was that the sum lacking was just an even hundred dollars! Yet after all, was it so strange? It was so easy to make a mistake of one figure in adding and subtracting columns. There did not, it was true, seem to be any mistake on the books; but of course there was a mistake somewhere. It was not at all likely that the bank had made the error. Banks never made mistakes. Well, there was no use crying over spilled milk. The success of the March Hare had been so phenomenal hitherto that one must put up with a strata of ill luck.

He hated to give up buying his typewriter, after all the hard work he had done to earn it. He supposed he could sell his Liberty Bond as Melville was planning to do and use that money instead of the sum he had laid by. But he did not just know how to go to work to convert a Liberty Bond into cash. It was an easy enough matter to buy a bond; but where did you go to sell one? How many business questions there were that a boy of seventeen was unable to answer! If he were to ask his father how to sell the bond, it might arouse suspicion, to ask anybody else might do so too. People would wonder why he, Paul Cameron, was selling a Liberty Bond he had bought only a short time before. Burmingham was a gossipy little town. Its good news traveled fast but so also did its bad news. Any item of interest, no matter how small, was rapidly spread from one end of the village to the other. Therefore Paul could not risk even making inquiries, let alone selling his property to any one in the place.

Yet he could not but laugh at the irony of the signs that confronted him wherever he went: Buy Bonds! Invest! There were selling booths at the bank, the library, the town hall. At every street corner you came upon them. But none of these agencies were purchasing bonds themselves. Nowhere did it say: Sell Bonds! These patriots were not at their posts to add to their troubles—not they!

Once it occurred to Paul to ask the cashier at the bank what people did with Liberty Bonds which they wanted to dispose of; but on second thought he realized that Mr. Stacy was an intimate friend of his father's and might mention the incident. Therefore he at length dismissed the possibility of selling his bond and thereby meeting his share of the March Hare deficit.

No, he must use his typewriter money. There was no escape. He chanced to be at the Echo offices that day with copy for the next issue of his paper and was still rebelliously wavering over the loss of his typewriter when the door of Mr. Carter's private room opened and the great man himself appeared, ushering out a visitor. Glancing about on his return from the elevator his eye fell on Paul.

"Ah, Paul, good afternoon," he nodded. "Come into my office a moment. I want to speak to you."

Paul followed timidly. It was seldom that his business brought him into personal touch with Mr. Carter, toward whom he still maintained no small degree of awe; usually the affairs relative to the school paper were transacted either through the business manager of the Echo or with one of his assistants.

But to-day Mr. Carter was suddenly all amiability. He escorted Paul into his sanctum, and after closing the door, tipped back in the leather chair before his desk and in leisurely fashion drew out a cigar.