Fanny lived her brief hour to the full, and Pidge Musser suffered and revolted for two. Pidge took the dreary monotone of talk into her soul, as she had taken her father’s, knowing that one day she would be full.
“Oh, you Musser,” Fanny would say. “Why don’t you come over to Foley Street?... You’re dryin’ up, Redhead. What do you do nights? What do you do all the time, thinkin’ and listnin’?... Where’s your fulluh, Redhead? Ain’t got one—wot? Little liar. You’re bad, you are, because you’re so still.... Come on over to Foley Street to-night. I’ll let you have a peep at Albert, m’li’l barber—just one peep, Redhead—not too close. I ain’t sure of him yet, but I’ll let you have one look—aw come on!”
So it was through the hours, pasting apricot labels, lobster, asparagus, pimento, peach, and codfish labels. More and more Fanny’s boys and men folded into one, whose name was Albert.
“I’m gettin’ him goin’—goin’, goin’. Psst! an’ he comes!” Fanny would say. “But I wouldn’t trust him to you, Musser—not longer than a hairpin, dam’ little party, you.”
Miss Claes was observing with some concern the result of her suggestion to Pidge, not to let the young editor know the Lance was hers.
“If it hadn’t been for my tampering, she would have heard about her book before this,” she said to Nagar. “Pidge looked so young, I felt it would prejudice Mr. Cobden against her work. He’s fascinated with Harrow Street, but seems to have no time or thought for a romance of eighteenth-century France! Yet he would have put through her book in a week, if he knew, seeing the story with the same eyes he sees the author.”
“And she doesn’t tell him?”
“No. That’s our Pidge, Nagar. I even suggested that I would speak to him—let the truth slip out. She caught me in her hands, those hard little hands, strong as a peasant’s, ‘Not for worlds, Miss Claes!’ she breathed, and there was a patch of white intensity across her upper lip, ‘Not for worlds!’”
“... Of course, I mean to write,” Pidge had granted to Dicky in the very beginning. “I’ve always meant to write, since the day I learned that print wasn’t done above the clouds somehow, like Moses’ tablets, and had to be written all out first by human beings. But I’m not ready to begin——” and she silently added the word “again” for her own composure.