“But who after that?”
“Sit tight, Dicky.”
... He coughed. “It isn’t like the desk in the old sense. We have talked about that. Pidge, I’m wabbling a bit, but the desk is yours.”
They were sitting in the windy front seats. She appeared to be looking into the back of the motor-man’s neck.
“When you get back,” he added.
Her eyes did not move.
“This isn’t reward, this is your place; no other can hold down the job. You’ve done it for months. There wouldn’t have been any Public Square, if you hadn’t. I know all about the ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ story, and the editorial paragraphs and how you have kept up the reviews, and somehow got stories without money and without price. John Higgins told me everything. It isn’t giving you reward. It is only going on as you were, with some money to work with, and two or three good men to help, and a salary for yourself that will make up in a small way for the pittance you’ve been living on for years.”
“There mustn’t be any desk, Dicky,” she said queerly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we’d be the laughing stock of New York, if I perched on a desk, calling myself the Editor.”