Mabel, hunting for Miss Gere in the big newspaper building, nearly died
of fright. Some repairs were being made, and the office force was
huddled into a space about half large enough for it up on the fourth
floor. When Mabel finally reached the room, she was told that Miss Gere
was out but that she might wait at her desk. The desk was a small,
disorderly table littered with papers swarming over, around and under a
battered typewriter. She sat down and looked about. Young men,
unattractive, harried looking young men with steely eyes hurried in,
dropped down before tables just like Miss Gere's, pounded furiously on
typewriters, or consulted earnestly with a tall, thin man in shirt
sleeves, who glared ferociously at their papers from the safe shadow of
his green eye-shade. To Mabel, watching with all her might, this tall
thin man seemed to be the only one who was not in a hurry. He listened
to everyone, sometimes to three or four at a time, answered questions,
sent instructions down a telephone that Mabel rightly guessed connected
with the printing rooms far below and seemed perfectly capable, as
indeed he was, of keeping a thousand different lines of action going at
once. Mabel wondered who he was.
He was the City Editor, and already he knew about Mabel and had judged
her with one of the lightning glances hidden under the shade. The room
was overheated, and Mabel, waiting as patiently as she could, commenced
to grow drowsy. In a half dream, she saw herself entering the magic
railing which surrounded the tall man's desk. _She_ did not lean
hectically over the rail and talk rapidly from the outside as did the
young men reporters. No, Mabel, grown tall and slender and surpassingly
beautiful, walked _into_ the charmed circle, greeting her chief with a
slow, faint smile. Then opening her hand-bag, and drawing off her gloves
while she lazily watched the great man through her long drooping lashes,
she proceeded to present a sheaf of papers written over closely in her
fine neat hand. The lines of her beautiful rajah silk sport suit clung
to her lovely figure as she modestly drew the chief's attention to some
particular statement. Stubby Mabel, in her plain, serviceable school
dress, sitting unnoticed at Miss Gere's table, was thrilled at the sight
of herself! As the dream-Mabel finished her interview with the City
Editor and rose, she said in response to his enthusiastic praise of her
work, "Thanks so much!"
The real Mabel was frozen with horror to hear herself actually speak the
words! For a moment she assured herself that she had imagined that too,
but a wild-looking, oldish man banging furiously on the typewriter on
the next table turned and stared at her and said, "Huh?" in an
absent-minded way.
"Nothing, sir," said Mabel in a flustered voice, not at all the voice of
the dream-Mabel who had wholly disappeared. The real Mabel sat very
still and red until Miss Gere came in.
Miss Gere was not at all what Mabel thought a Society Editor should be.
The lady slouched in, a fedora hat pulled low over her eyes giving her
very much the general appearance of the City Editor. A long, full ulster
hung uncertainly from her thin shoulders, and its deep pockets bulged
with scrap paper. Her beautiful, delicate hands were quite grubby on the
knuckles. When she entered, she smiled a brilliant, transforming smile
that seemed to embrace everyone in the room. All the hurried young men
felt it and beamed in return; the City Editor turned his green eye-shade
in her direction, and the frantic typist beside Mabel stopped long
enough to flap a thin paw in her direction.
She threaded her way slowly across the room, shaking her head as Mabel
rose and offered her the chair she was occupying, and sat down in
another. She pushed back her hat.
"You are prompt," she said. "I didn't expect you would come today,
though your mother said you would. She says you are very anxious for a
newspaper career. Well, you must be willing to do a good deal of hard
work." She turned first one and then the other grubby hand over and
studied her perfectly kept nails. Mabel, fascinated, watched her every
movement.
"I told your mother it was dollars to doughnuts that you wouldn't stick
it out a month, but she seems to think you will. Of course if you have
actually gone to the length of leaving home and all that, why, you
_must_ be in earnest. Do you know anything at all about reporting?"
"A little," said Mabel. "I have reported for the _High School Clarion_."
A smile flitted across Miss Gere's thin, eager face. She did not seem as
deeply impressed as she might have been. Mabel hastened on.
"I write a good deal by myself," she said. "I can bring you some poems
and sketches that I have done."
"It won't be necessary," said Miss Gere hastily, "although I am sure
they are well worth reading. I will start you on something easy. You are
to be my assistant, you know. All these men around here are reporters
too, and that big man is our City Editor. Bring what you write to me
because he doesn't want to know that you are on earth. I have a full day
tomorrow and you may cover the business meeting at the Red Cross Rooms,
and then you may call up the women on this list, and ask them to give
you some details about the entertainments they are giving. Bring in a
nice little story about all this, and I will give you further
directions when I see you. You may call some of these ladies up tonight.
Use all sorts of tact."
She passed a slip of paper to Mabel bearing a typewritten list of
well-known names. Mabel took it, and guessing from Miss Gere's
preoccupied manner that the interview was at an end reluctantly passed
out.
Reaching the street, she dropped the humble air that she had worn in the
office and, feeling like a conqueror, turned toward her new home. Her
thoughts were all of Miss Gere. How gloriously, fascinatingly thin she
was! Mabel unfastened her coat. Perhaps she would look thinner if her
coat flopped.
Then she heard her name called.
A big car was crawling along the curb, and from the limousine Claire
Maslin and Rosanna Horton called her name again. The car stopped and in
response to a word from his young mistress the Chinaman stepped down and
opened the door.
"Let us take you home," said Claire in her deep, drawling voice. Mabel
entered and seated herself, smiling.
"I have just been down making arrangements to begin my newspaper
career," she said. "I think every young writer should spend a certain
time on newspaper work. It is such good practice, and one learns so much
about Life."
"Dear me!" said Rosanna. "What do you mean, Mabel? Is your mother going
to let you do newspaper reporting?"
"She is perfectly willing for me to do whatever I feel I ought to do,"
said Mabel loftily. "Mother and I have had a good talk, and I find she
is a great deal broader than I feared she would be. The fact is I have
left home and have started on a career. I have a charming little box of
a place where you must look me up."
"Splendid!" said Claire, clapping her gloved hands lightly. "I shall
tell my father, and see what he says. I am always begging him to let me
go away and live my life as I want to live it."
"But, Mabel!" gasped Rosanna in horror. "You can't do anything like
that. You are only a little girl! You _can't_ go off and live by
yourself. Why, you just can't! And, besides, you know the loyalty and
service a Girl Scout owes to her mother. I don't see how you can _think_
of such a thing. I am sure you must be joking."
Mabel's face flushed deeply. "You don't understand at all, Rosanna," she
said stiffly. "What might be right for one is not right for another. You
know the Captain herself told me to live for myself alone and see how it
would work out, and it is working out wonderfully. I shall report
Saturday night at the meeting that it is a great success."
"Oh, dear, _dear_!" cried Rosanna. "I know she did not mean to have
anything like this happen. Oh, Mabel, you _must_ go back home!"
"I think she is right," said Claire.
"Certainly I am right," Mabel declared. "My apartment is around the next
corner, Claire, number 112, if you will drop me there."
The girls were quite silent as Mabel indicated the apartment house and
said good-bye, asking them both to come to see her. As they drove off,
Claire was smiling and Rosanna was very grave.
"I wonder how she will come out," said Claire, as they turned toward
Rosanna's house.
"It is perfectly _awful_!" exclaimed Rosanna.
"She says the Captain told her to," said Claire.
"I know she never meant her to go so far," wailed Rosanna. "Well, I
shall tell her when I go home, and she will know what to do. Cita never
makes a mistake."
"Cita?" said Claire. "That is Spanish."
"Yes," said Rosanna, smiling. "When she married my Uncle Robert she
seemed so tiny and so dimply and young to be married to anyone that I
told her that I meant to call her Cita. Why, I couldn't say _Aunt_! And
she _is_ Cita. She is dear. That is what it means."
"I know," said Claire. "She is a dear, I can agree with you there. I
like her as well as I ever like anyone."
"Don't you _love_ your friends?" asked Rosanna wistfully. This strange
green-eyed girl, so cold and so reserved, made her feel sad.
"I have no friends," replied Claire indifferently.
"Well, you will make a lot of friends here in Louisville," Rosanna
assured her, smiling.
"No," said Claire. The car stopped before Rosanna's house.
"Oh, yes!" insisted Rosanna as she stood at the curb. "You see you will
want friends when you grow up. Every girl does."
"Not I," said Claire, shaking her head. "I shall need no friends. Indeed
I shall _want_ no friends at the place I am going to when I grow up."
She dropped back against the cushions as though she was suddenly very
tired and Rosanna, forgetting to move, watched the luxurious car bear
its beautiful young owner away.
"Oh, dear!" sighed Rosanna finally, and with dragging feet went into the
house to find Cita. But she was out, and Rosanna, puzzled and
distressed, went to her own pleasant room, and curling up on a big divan
tried to solve the new Scout's mysterious words. She forgot all about
Miss Brewster, who at that moment, also curled up on a divan in her new
apartment, had just happened to think that she was growing hungry and
would have to get her own supper. She hurried out to the ice-chest and
found it empty with the exception of three large, violent looking green
pickles on a plate. Mabel bit one. It was very, very sour. Grabbing her
pocketbook, she hurried down to the nearest grocery and bought a loaf of
bread, a pound of butter, some cold boiled ham, a glass of orange
marmalade and a package of shredded wheat. With these packages in hand,
she retraced her steps, the almost empty pocketbook swinging from her
hand.
Supper was queer and not very cheerful, but Mabel knew that she would
find it strange at first and the thought that part of her work lay
before her that very night kept her spirits up. She had her telephoning
to do.
She did not wash the cup and plate, but left them on the table to do in
the morning. She was on her way to the telephone when the ringing of the
bell made her jump. She seized the receiver. Mrs. Horton, the Scout
Captain, was speaking.
"I have just heard the news, Mabel," she said pleasantly. "Isn't it
wonderful? And you are really going to try out my experiment? It is
wonderful to be able to live for yourself alone, isn't it? Nearly always
we have duties that hold us back, and I know you are too good a Scout to
disregard any of yours, but of course your mother has Frank, and he is
_so_ devoted to her that it really leaves you free. She says he always
helps her as though he was a girl. I called you up to suggest that as
long as you are making such a real test that it would be well to
postpone the report you were going to bring to the meeting."
"I think so too," Mabel agreed hastily. "I know it will be a success,
and if I can prove that girls are able to do for themselves, without
having to do all sorts of other things like practicing and helping, at
the same time, it will be a great thing for girls. Don't you think so?"
"I do indeed," Mrs. Horton assured her. "And just _think_ what it will
mean for mothers! They will be so free. As it is now, your mother, for
instance, feels as though she ought to look after you and see that you
have good clothes to wear to school and good food to eat, and she wants
to fix a pretty room for you, and because you are studying and
practicing she does a lot of darning for you and all that sort of thing,
and probably she makes most of your dresses because they cost so much to
buy these hard times.
"Why, by the time she has done all this, and has looked after you when
you are ill, she has no time for herself. I called your mother up to get
your address, and she seemed so pleased with everything. She said with
Frank to help her, she was going to be able to do so much that she has
been wanting to do ever since you were a baby. She and Frank are going
to the theatre tonight, and tomorrow she is going to begin designing for
that big firm on Fourth Street. I suppose she told you about it?" she
added.
"No, she didn't," said Mabel, rather embarrassed to hear in this way of
her own mother's plans.
"We were so busy today that we didn't get time to say much."
"Well, I am glad to be able to tell you good news," said the little
Captain cheerily. "It will be so much off your mind to be able to go to
sleep tonight and be sure that things are working out right. I think you
are so brave, Mabel. I never would have the courage to do what you are
doing, even though I am quite grown up. And you are really only a little
girl in years."
"But I feel old in experience," sighed Mabel. She thought she heard a
soft giggle at the other end of the wire, but at once Mrs. Horton
coughed rather loudly and Mabel knew she was mistaken.
"That makes such a difference," said the Captain. "For my part, I am a
_perfect goose_. I would be so lonesome and afraid there where you are,
and I would rather do any amount of mending and dishes rather than go
down and work in a stuffy newspaper office and beg a lot of women for
items about their silly affairs. Yes, you are really very brave. You
must call me once in awhile and let me know how you are progressing. And
you need not come to the Scout meetings for awhile if you are busy. I
will excuse you. I will explain to the girls just what you are doing to
help them all. Good-night! Oh, your mother said for me to tell you
good-night for her too as she was rushing off to the theatre, so there
are two good-nights for you, Mabel dear. Good luck, and I hope you will
find time to ask me over to tea with you some afternoon."
"Indeed I will!" said Mabel. "Good-night!"
She turned from the receiver. Suddenly she felt very small and young,
and the pretty rooms were stiller than the rooms at home somehow.
The subject for a poem flashed into her mind. And quick as a wink she
made up the first verse
"Alone, alone, the world before me.
What is this I leave behind?
Happiness and heat and mother;
All to train my wondrous mind."
Somehow _heat_ did not sound very poetical, but the apartment was
certainly freezing cold.