“He’s beginning to be read,” said John Higgins. “It’s not a bad story. We’d better take it.”
“It is not his best work. There’s a cavity in it,” said Pidge. “If it were by a new name altogether, we’d write the author suggesting that he work over the weak part.”
“Do it,” said John Higgins.
Pidge laughed nervously. “He won’t like it,” she said.
“Don’t mind that. Rufus Melton can write. He’ll have his hour, but go ahead and scuttle the ship, young woman. We don’t care about pleasing our passengers.”
Back at her own desk, Pidge was smitten with the idea that she wasn’t being fair. In the course of reading Melton’s story, she had not once forgotten that he had failed to pay back that fifty dollars. Not only that, Rufus Melton hadn’t mentioned it; and he was said to be making money right now. She had to write the letter to Melton three times. Films of ice formed on the sentences and had to be skimmed off, in spite of her most rigid effort. She carried the sheet, signed by “The Editors,” to John Higgins, with a restless feeling that damage was done.
“That’s just like what Dicky Cobden would say,” he remarked, handing it back. “Send it along with the manuscript.”
Pidge wasn’t allowed to forget Dicky Cobden, though Richard, himself, was across the world and remained across, apparently groping to find the exact antipodes from Washington Square, New York. Between Miss Claes’ affection for him and John Higgins’ and Nagar’s; considering her occasional use of his “parlor” in Harrow Street and her daily use of his old desk in the office, to say nothing of the position she occupied through his kindness and care—no, she wasn’t being allowed to forget.
About the same time that Rufus Melton’s story came in to the office, a dingy bit of white paper came to Harrow Street for Pidge. It was like a paper you would see in the street around a public school building. Pidge was awed at the unfailing magic of the post-office authorities, that the letter had ever been delivered. It was from Fanny Gallup, who had married Albert and left the pasting table shortly after Pidge’s change of fortune. Pidge had seen Fanny but once in the meantime, but had asked her to write or telephone in case of need.
Pidge found the hall designated in the third floor of a condemned building in Foley Street, and was directed to a door through which came the sounds of a crying child. Her knock was answered, and the caller gradually realized through the shadows that she was being grinned at. She smiled back, wondering if the shoeless creature were Fanny’s sister or mother. She wore no outer waist and a heavy plaid skirt that was splashed with wash water. An infant shrank into the hollow curve of her body, and another child sat wailing on the wet floor behind.