_Editor’s Table_
One by one the Editors appeared, grim with the prospect of renewed
and unremittent editing. It was hours before Cherrywold, the verbal
Valentine, could sufficiently cast off the burden of his perpetually
broken heart to enter the conversation, but the others gradually warmed
to the task of post-vacation badinage.
“How were the girls at Grosse Pointe Village?” inquired Han
solicitously of the pagan Rabnon.
“How was _the_ girl, you mean!” chirped Aerial. “Why, along in August
he telegraphed me, ‘A girl has been seen in Grosse Pointe Village. What
shall I do?’”
“What did he dew?” inquired the scandal-seeking Mrs. Stephens.
“Don’t know,” said Aerial. “I telegraphed back, ‘Compromise’, and let
it go at that!”
“How shiffless!” cried Mrs. Stephens. And at the same moment the deep
base roar of Mr. Stephens was heard calling for water, for she had
fainted from the shock of Aerial’s remark, being a perfect lady.
“Why pick on me?” countered Rabnon, when the excitement had subsided.
“The girls of Grosse Pointe Village are all right. One of them
entertained me this summer with an account of how an empty taxi-cab
once rolled up to Dobbs Ferry, and Cherrywold got out. You can’t beat
that for a masterly bit of description!”
Thus roused from thoughts of “all for love and love for all”, the
slandered Cherrywold girded himself against the powers of cynicism.
“You are a pack of blasphemous cowards all!” he cried. “It has been
alleged that Mr. and Mrs. Stephens are the only people in the world who
still believe in fairies, and that Jonah was swallowed by the whale,
but I believe--”
“‘What troubles you, my little one? The dawn is far away,’” soothed
Han. But, refusing to be calmed by a snatch of one of his own
lullabies, Cherrywold was only prevented from assaulting his Oriental
acquaintance by main force.
“You! You c-can’t SPELL!” he thundered. And the office crashed in ruins.
* * * * *
“That’s what they all say--when they can’t think of anything else. And
so say I--when I can’t think of anything else,” remarked