"Why not," suggested L. Frankland, "go in with me as partner?"
"Partner--that would be fine--but I haven't any money."
"Neither have I--and I'll be turned out of here a week from to-morrow
if I haven't twenty-seven fifty by then. That's how much I'm behind."
She smiled cheerfully. Then Georgia remembered her. She was the nice
old maid who had given her the seat in the car on the day she had met
Mason.
"What's your rent!"
"Twenty-seven fifty."
"What arrangements do you want to make?"
"Fifty-fifty on everything."
"I'll take a chance," said Georgia, removing her hat. "But," she
exclaimed, looking around, "why you've only got one machine--and a
double keyboard at that. I'm not used to them."
"We can rent another for a dollar a week--any sort you want," L.
Frankland suggested with ready resource.
"We can't get it here to-day. Let's see, Miss, Miss ah--what is your
name?" They told each other. "Miss Frankland, are you a fast writer?"
"No," she answered, composedly rattling off a few test lines--"Now is
the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party." It was
true enough. She was slow.
"How much work do you get?"
"Four ten-cent letters and a short brief this morning. That's all
to-day."
"What's the idea now--wait?" asked Georgia, taking off her coat and
leaning against the solitary desk.
"Yep--like young lawyers."
"No use our both waiting with one machine between us. I tell you
what--you go over to the Standard Company, on Wabash Avenue, and order
a number four sent here, then traipse around to some other public
offices--you can find plenty in the back of the telephone book--and see
if they won't sublet us some of their work at half rates. I'll hold
down the place, and get the hang of this keyboard while you're gone."
L. Frankland saluted. "Aye, aye, ma'am," said she. "I likewise do now
promote you to be captain of this brig."
When she returned she brought a sheaf, the manuscript of a drama.
Georgia knocked it out in twenty-four hours, in triplicate, and took it
back to the firm of origin in the Opera House Block. "Z. &
Z.--Theatrical Typists" was the sign on the door.
The room was small, and thick with smoke. There must have been a dozen
men in it, all important-looking. Mr. Zingmeister, the senior partner,
a fat young Hebrew, received Georgia's work.
"Rotten," he said, glancing through it.
"Why?" she asked sharply.
"Wrong spacing. A script plays a minute to the page if typed right.
How could anyone tell how long this would play?" He held it up between
two fingers, contemptuously.
"Give me a sample act for a guide and I'll do it over for nothing."
He hesitated. "Too many novices in this profession already," he
grumbled.
"My time's up," said she, reaching for her work. "If you don't want to
pay me for it, I'll take it back."
He laid his hand on it.
"Come, come," said she, impatiently.
"Oh, keep your shirt on while I think it over," he answered. "All
right, do it over again and do it right," he sighed plaintively, "and
space it this way. Speeches solid. Drop two for character's name.
Capitalize them--caps, understand?--with red underlines. Also red
underline the business, so."
He demonstrated with a spoiled page from the waste basket.
"That'll give you the code, understand," he concluded, shoving it in
her hand. "Now shake a foot."
The important-looking beings in the room apparently neither saw nor
heard. Save for the clouds of smoke that issued from them they might
have been graven.
When she got back to 1241 she was bursting with an idea.
"How long does your lease run, Miss Frankland?" she asked.
"Until May first."
"You can't get out of it!"
"No, I signed up."
"Well, if we don't pay our rent they'll put us out." It proved to be a
prophecy.
Frankland & Connor found a bigger room for sixteen a month in the
theatrical district, which for some unexplained reason converges from
three sides upon the Court House. They described themselves as
"experts in theatrical work," and presently they were.
They learned to give a dramatic criticism with each receipted bill.
The play they had just transcribed was deeply moving, especially in the
big scene, or one long roar, sure-fire. Playwrights were as thick as
July blackberries and the firm prospered.
Occasionally Georgia sat up most of the night with a scared author and
an impatient stage director, altering the script of a play after it had
flivvered on the opening, and getting out new parts for it.
At first, she and L. Frankland found themselves forced into overtime
almost every evening, because the theatrical people were invariably in
such a raging hurry to get their work done, vast enterprises apparently
hanging upon the rapid, if not the immediate, completion thereof. With
growing experience, however, the firm learned to promise
impossibilities for the sake of peace, but not to attempt them.
When the orders came in faster than they could handle them, Frankland &
Connor jobbed them out again at fifty per cent. Georgia had three or
four private stenographers on her list who were glad to pick up a
little pin money on their employers' machines after hours. Perhaps in
hours, too. She didn't know or care.
At the end of a twelvemonth she had paid off her debts, except the one
to Mason, on which she sent interest.
She was also able to employ a woman to help her mother with the
housework two afternoons a week.
Early in the firm's second year of existence, L. Frankland came in one
Monday morning with a long face, a rare thing for her.
"I want to make a change," she said, "I'm not satisfied. I've been
thinking it over. This isn't an impulse."
"A change?"
"Yes."
Georgia was genuinely distressed, because she had grown very fond of
Miss Frankland. There was no more cheerful person in the world, she
thought, than this dry, twinkling old maid. And she had hoped her
feeling was returned. Real friendships were too rare to be tossed away
so suddenly.
"I'm not satisfied," repeated L. Frankland, "because the present deal
between us isn't fair. You've pulled the big half of the load ever
since we started--so, give me a third interest instead of a half--I'd
be better pleased, honest Injun, hope to die."
"Oh, shut up, Frank, and get to work. I've no time for foolishness,"
responded Georgia, much relieved. "Fifty-fifty it started and
fifty-fifty it sticks."
Which it did.