"I think we should have regular market reports," she announced, thoughtfully. "I am sure Mr. Harkless would approve. Don't you think he would?" She turned to Parker.

"Market reports!" Mr. Fisbee exclaimed. "I should never have thought of market reports, nor, do I imagine, would either of my--my a.s.sociates. A woman to conceive the idea of market reports!"

The editor blushed. "Why, who would, dear, if not a woman, or a speculator, and I'm not a speculator; and neither are you, and that's the reason you didn't think of them. So, Mr. Parker, as there is so much pressure, and if you don't mind continuing to act as reporter as well as compositor until after to-morrow, and if it isn't too wet--you must take an umbrella--would it be too much bother if you went around to all the shops--_stores_, I mean--to all the grocers', and the butchers', and that leather place we pa.s.sed, the tannery?--and if there's one of those places where they bring cows, would it be too much to ask you to stop there?--and at the flour-mill, if it isn't too far?--and at the dry-goods store? And you must take a blank-book and sharpened pencil, And will you price everything, please, and jot down how much things are?"

Orders received, the impetuous Parker was departing on the instant, when she stopped him with a little cry: "But you haven't any umbrella!"

And she forced her own, a slender wand, upon him; it bore a cunningly wrought handle and its fabric was of glistening silk. The foreman, unable to decline it, thanked her awkwardly, and, as she turned to speak to Fisbee, bolted out of the door and ran down the steps without unfolding the umbrella; and as he made for Mr. Martin's emporium, he b.u.t.toned it securely under his long "Prince Albert," determined that not a drop of water should touch and ruin so delicate a thing. Thus he carried it, triumphantly dry, through the course of his reportings of that day.

When he had gone the editor laid her hand on Fisbee's arm. "Dear," she said, "do you think you would take cold if you went over to the hotel and made a note of all the arrivals for the last week--and the departures, too? I noticed that Mr. Harkless always filled two or three--sticks, isn't it?--with them and things about them, and somehow it 'read' very nicely. You must ask the landlord all about them; and, if there aren't any, we can take up the same amount of s.p.a.ce lamenting the dull times, just as he used to. You see I've read the 'Herald'

faithfully; isn't it a good thing I always subscribed for it?" She patted Fisbee's cheek, and laughed gaily into his mild, vague old eyes.

"It won't be this scramble to 'fill up' much longer. I have plans, gentlemen," she cried, "and before long we will print news. And we must buy 'plate matter' instead of 'patent insides'; and I had a talk with the a.s.sociated Press people in Rouen--but that's for afterwhile. And I went to the hospital this morning before I left. They wouldn't let me see him again, but they told me all about him, and he's better; and I got Tom to go to the jail--he was so mystified, he doesn't know what I wanted it for--and he saw some of those beasts, and I can do a column of description besides an editorial about them, and I will be fierce enough to suit Carlow, you may believe that. And I've been talking to Senator Burns--that is, listening to Senator Burns, which is much stupider--and I think I can do an article on national politics. I'm not very well up on local issues yet, but I--" She broke off suddenly. "There! I think we can get out to-morrow's number without any trouble. By the time you get back from the hotel, father, I'll have half my stuff written--'written up,' I mean. Take your big umbrella and go, dear, and please ask at the express office if my typewriter has come."

She laughed again with sheer delight, like a child, and ran to the corner and got the cotton umbrella and placed it in the old man's hand.

As he reached the door, she called after him: "Wait!" and went to him and knelt before him, and, with the humblest, proudest grace in the world, turned up his trousers to keep them from the mud. Ross Schofield had never considered Mr. Fisbee a particularly sacred sort of person, but he did from that moment. The old man made some timid protest, at his daughter's action, But she answered; "The great ladies used to buckle the Chevalier Bayard's spurs for him, and you're a great deal nicer than the Chev----_You haven't any rubbers_! I don't believe _any_ of you have any rubbers!" And not until both Fisbee and Mr. Schofield had promised to purchase overshoes at once, and in the meantime not to step in any puddles, would she let her father depart upon his errand. He crossed the Square with the strangest, jauntiest step ever seen in Plattville.

Solomon Tibbs had a warm argument with Miss Selina as to his ident.i.ty.

Miss Selina maintaining that the figure under the big umbrella--only the legs and coat-tails were visible to them--was that of a stranger, probably an Englishman.

In the "Herald" office the editor turned, smiling, to the paper's remaining va.s.sal. "Mr. Schofield, I heard some talk in Rouen of an oil company that had been formed to prospect for kerosene in Carlow County.

Do you know anything about it?"

Ross, surfeited with honor, terror, and possessed by a sweet distress at finding himself tete-a-tete with the lady, looked at the wall and replied:

"Oh, it's that Eph Watts's foolishness."

"Do you know if they have begun to dig for it yet?"

"Ma'am?" said Ross.

"Have they begun the diggings yet?"

"No, ma'am; I think not. They've got a contrapshun fixed up about three mile south. I don't reckon they've begun yet, hardly; they're gittin'

the machinery in place. I heard Eph say they'd begin to bore--_dig_, I mean, ma'am, I meant to say dig----" He stopped, utterly confused and unhappy; and she understood his manly purpose, and knew him for a gentleman whom she liked.

"You mustn't be too much surprised," she said; "but in spite of my ignorance about such things, I mean to devote a good deal of s.p.a.ce to the oil company; it may come to be of great importance to Carlow. We won't go into it in to-morrow's paper, beyond an item or so; but do you think you could possibly find Mr. Watts and ask him for some information as to their progress, and if it would be too much trouble for him to call here some time to-morrow afternoon, or the day after? I want him to give me an interview if he will. Tell him, please, he will very greatly oblige us."

"Oh, he'll come all right," answered her companion, quickly. "I'll take Tibbs's buggy and go down there right off. Eph won't lose no time gittin' _here_!" And with this encouraging a.s.surance he was flying forth, when he, like the others, was detained by her solicitous care.

She was a born mother. He protested that in the buggy he would be perfectly sheltered; besides, there wasn't another umbrella about the place; he _liked_ to get wet, anyway; had always loved rain. The end of it was that he went away in a sort of tremor, wearing her rain-cloak over his shoulders, which garment, as it covered its owner completely when she wore it, hung almost to his knees. He darted around a corner; and there, breathing deeply, tenderly removed it; then, borrowing paper and cord at a neighboring store, wrapped it neatly, and stole back to the printing-office on the ground floor of the "Herald" building, and left the package in charge of Bud Tipworthy, mysteriously charging him to care for it as for his own life, and not to open it, but if the lady so much as set one foot out of doors before his return, to hand it to her with the message: "He borrowed another off J. Hankins."

Left alone, the lady went to the desk and stood for a time looking gravely at Harkless's chair. She touched it gently, as she had touched it once before that morning, and then she spoke to it as if he were sitting there, and as she would not have spoken, had he been sitting there.

"You didn't want grat.i.tude, did you?" she whispered, with sad lips.

Soon she smiled at the blue ribbons, patted the chair gaily on the back, and, seizing upon pencil and pad, dashed into her work with rare energy.

She bent low over the desk, her pencil moving rapidly, and, except for a momentary interruption from Mr. Tipworthy, she seemed not to pause for breath; certainly her pencil did not. She had covered many sheets when her father returned; and, as he came in softly, not to disturb her, she was so deeply engrossed she did not hear him; nor did she look up when Parker entered, but pursued the formulation of her fast-flying ideas with the same single purpose and abandon; so the two men sat and waited while their chieftainess wrote absorbedly. At last she glanced up and made a little startled exclamation at seeing them there, and then gave them cheery greeting. Each placed several scribbled sheets before her, and she, having first a.s.sured herself that Fisbee had bought his overshoes, and having expressed a fear that Mr. Parker had found her umbrella too small, as he looked damp (and indeed he _was_ damp), cried praises on their notes and offered the reporters great applause.

"It is all so splendid!" she cried. "How could you do it so quickly? And in the rain, too! This is exactly what we need. I've done most of the things I mentioned, I think, and made a draught of some plans for hereafter. And about that man's coming out for Congress, I must tell you it is my greatest hope that he will. We can let it go until he does, and then----But doesn't it seem to you that it would be a good notion for the 'Herald' to have a woman's page--'For Feminine Readers,' or, 'Of Interest to Women'--once a week?"

"A woman's page!" exclaimed Fisbee. "I could never have thought of that, could you, Mr. Parker?"

"And now," she continued, "I think that when I've gone over what I've written and beat it into better shape I shall be ready for something to eat. Isn't it almost time for luncheon?"

This simple, and surely natural, inquiry had a singular, devastating effect upon her hearers. They looked upon each other with fallen jaws and complete stupefaction. The old man began to grow pale, and Parker glared about him with a wild eye. Fortunately, the editor was too busy at her work to notice their agitation; she applied herself to making alterations here and there, sometimes frowningly crossing out whole lines and even paragraphs, sometimes smiling and beaming at the writing; and, as she bent earnestly over the paper, against the darkness of the rainy day, the glamour about her fair hair was like a light in the room. To the minds of her two companions, this l.u.s.tre was a gentle but unbearable accusation; and each dreaded the moment when her Work should be finished, with a great dread. There was a small "store-room"

adjoining the office, and presently Mr. Parker, sweating at the brow, walked in there. The old man gave him a look of despairing reproach, but in a moment the foreman's voice was heard: "Oh, Mr. Fisbee, can you step here a second?"

"Yes, indeed!" was Fisbee's reply; and he fled guiltily into the "store-room," and Parker closed the door. They stood knee-deep in the clutter and lumber, facing each other abjectly.

"Well, we're both done, anyway, Mr. Fisbee," remarked the foreman.

"Indubitably, Mr. Parker," the old man answered; "it is too true."

"Never to think a blame thing about dinner for her!" Parker continued, remorsefully. "And her a lady that can turn off copy like a rotary snowplough in a Dakota blizzard! Did you see the sheets she's piled up on that desk?"

"There is no cafe--nothing--in Plattville, that could prepare food worthy of her," groaned Fisbee. "Nothing!"

"And we never thought of it. Never made a single arrangement. Never struck us she didn't live on keeping us dry and being good, I guess."

"How can I go there and tell her that?"

"Lord!"

"She cannot go to the hotel----"

"Well, I guess not! It ain't fit for her. Lum's table is hard enough on a strong man. Landis doesn't know a good cake from a Fiji missionary pudding. I don't expect pie is much her style, and, besides, the Palace Hotel pies--well!--the boss was a mighty uncomplaining man, but I used to notice his articles on field drainage got kind of sour and low-spirited when they'd been having more than the regular allowance of pie for dinner. She can't go there anyway; it's no use; it's after two o'clock, and the dining-room shuts off at one. I wonder what kind of cake she likes best."

"I don't know," said the perplexed Fisbee. "If we ask her--"

"If we could sort of get it out of her diplomatically, we could telegraph to Rouen for a good one."

"Ha!" said the other, brightening up. "You try it, Mr. Parker. I fear I have not much skill in diplomacy, but if you----"

The compositor's mouth drooped at the corners, and he interrupted gloomily: "But it wouldn't get here till to-morrow."

"True; it would not."

They fell into a despondent reverie, with their chins in their bosoms.

There came a cheerful voice from the next room, but to them it brought no cheer; in their ears it sounded weak from the need of food and faint with piteous reproach.

"Father, aren't you coming to have luncheon with me?"

"Mr. Parker, what are we to do?" whispered the old man, hoa.r.s.ely.

"Is it too far to take her to Briscoes'?"

"In the rain?"

"Take her with you to Tibbs's."

"Their noon meal is long since over; and their larder is not--is not--extensive."