第8章

"It's about the society-page lay-out." He hesitated."I wonder if it'd be rushing you too much if --say," he suddenly broke off, and standing with his hands in his pockets, looked down at her with anxious admiration, "I believe you just know about everything.""No, I don't, Mr.Tembarom; but I'm very glad about the page.

Everybody's glad."

One of the chief difficulties Tembarom found facing him when he talked to Little Ann was the difficulty of resisting an awful temptation to take hold of her--to clutch her to his healthy, tumultuous young breast and hold her there firmly.He was half ashamed of himself when he realized it, but he knew that his venial weakness was shared by Jim Bowles and Steinberger and probably others.

She was so slim and light and soft, and the serious frankness of her eyes and the quaint air of being a sort of grown-up child of astonishing intelligence produced an effect it was necessary to combat with.

"What I wanted to say," he put it to her, "was that I believe if you'd just let me talk this thing out to you it'd do me good.Ibelieve you'd help me to get somewhere.I've got to fix up a scheme for getting next the people who have things happening to them that Ican make society stuff out of, you know.Biker didn't make a hit of it, but, gee! I've just got to.I've got to.""Yes," answered Little Ann, her eyes fixed on him thoughtfully;"you've got to, Mr.Tembarom."

"There's not a soul in the parlor.Would you mind coming down and sitting there while I talk at you and try to work things out? You could go on with your marking."She thought it over a minute.

"I'll do it if Father can spare me," she made up her mind."I'll go and ask him."She went to ask him, and returned in two or three minutes with her small sewing-basket in her hand.

"He can spare me," she said."He's reading his paper, and doesn't want to talk."They went down-stairs together and found the room empty.Tembarom turned up the lowered gas, and Little Ann sat down in the cozy-corner with her work-basket on her knee.Tembarom drew up a chair and sat down opposite to her.She threaded a needle and took up one of Jim's new socks.

"Now," she said.

"It's like this," he explained."The page is a new deal, anyhow.

There didn't used to be an up-town society column at all.It was all Fifth Avenue and the four hundred; but ours isn't a fashionable paper, and their four hundred ain't going to buy it to read their names in it.They'd rather pay to keep out of it.Uptown's growing like smoke, and there's lots of people up that way that'd like their friends to read about their weddings and receptions, and would buy a dozen copies to send away when their names were in.There's no end of women and girls that'd like to see their clothes described and let their friends read the descriptions.They'd buy the paper, too, you bet.

It'll be a big circulation-increaser.It's Galton's idea, and he gave the job to Biker because he thought an educated fellow could get hold of people.But somehow he couldn't.Seems as if they didn't like him.

He kept getting turned down.The page has been mighty poor-- no pictures of brides or anything.Galton's been sick over it.He'd been sure it'd make a hit.Then Biker's always drinking more or less, and he's got the swell head, anyhow.I believe that's the reason he couldn't make good with the up-towners.""Perhaps he was too well educated, Mr.Tembarom," said Little Ann.

She was marking a letter J in red cotton, and her outward attention was apparently wholly fixed on her work.

"Say, now," Tembarom broke out, "there's where you come in.You go on working as if there was nothing but that sock in New York, but Iguess you've just hit the dot.Perhaps that was it.He wanted to do Fifth Avenue work anyway, and he didn't go at Harlem right.He put on Princeton airs when he asked questions.Gee! a fellow can't put on any kind of airs when he's the one that's got to ask.""You'll get on better," remarked Little Ann."You've got a friendly way and you've a lot of sense.I've noticed it."Her head was bent over the red J and she still looked at it and not at Tembarom.This was not coyness, but simple, calm absorption.If she had not been making the J, she would have sat with her hands folded in her lap, and gazed at the young man with undisturbed attention.