She turned just in time to see a grinning reporter writing on the bulletin board: "Miss G. McCormick--Human interest story about the inner life of a paper bag."

Sometimes it might have brought a smile, usually it would have fired her to the desired rage, but to-day it contributed to her tearfulness. "Oh they needn't worry," she murmured, bending her head over a drawer, and tossing things about furiously, "there's no getting married for me! This office has settled that!"

The city editor seemed to take special delight in sending her out on every story which would "give married life a black eye." When the father left the little children dest.i.tute, when the mother ran away with the other man, or the jealous wife shot the other woman, Georgia was always right on the spot because they said she was so clever at that sort of thing. "Oh it makes one just _crazy_ to get married," she had said, witheringly, to Joe one night.

Why did he want to marry her, anyway? When she _told_ him she didn't want to--wasn't that enough? Was it respectful to treat her refusal as though it were a subtle kind of joke? Various nice boys had wanted at various times to marry her, and she had always explained to them that it was impossible, and sent them, more or less cheerfully, on their various ways. But this man who made paper bags, this jolly, good-natured, seemingly easy-going fellow, who held that the most important thing in the world was for her, Georgia, to have a good time, only seemed much amused at the idea of her not having time to marry him, and when she told him, with just as much conviction as she had ever told any of the others, that he had better begin looking around for some one else, he would reply, "All right--sure," and would straightway ask where she wished to go for dinner that night or whether she preferred an automobile ride to a spin in his new motor boat. Now what was one to do with a man like that?

A man who laughed at refusals and mellowed with each pa.s.sing snub!

"Telephone, Miss McCormick,"--the boy sang out from the booth. The opening "h.e.l.lo" was very short, but the voice changed oddly on the "Oh, Ernestine." Her whole face softened. It was another Georgia now. "Why certainly--I'll get them for you; you know I love to do things for you down town, but my dear--what in the world do you want with flower seeds this time of year?"--"Oh--I see; planted in the fall--but the flowers that bloom in the spring--tra la."

They chatted for a little while and after Georgia had hung up the receiver she sat there looking straight into the phone--her face as dreamy as Georgia's freckled face well could be. "By Jinks,"--she was saying to herself--"it _can_ be like that!" It was a most opportune time for the paper bag man to telephone. He wondered why her voice was so soft, and why there was not the usual plea about being too busy when he asked her to meet him at the little j.a.panese place for a cup of tea. "And it's positively heroic of Joe to drink that tea," she smiled to herself, as she wrestled with her shirt waist sleeves and her jacket.

But out on the street she grew stern with herself. "Now don't go and do any fool thing," she admonished. "Don't jump at conclusions. You aren't Ernestine, and he isn't Karl. He's Joseph Tank--of all abominable names!

And he makes paper bags--of all ridiculous things! Tank's Paper Bags!"

she guessed _not!_ Suppose in some rash moment she did marry him. People would say: "What business is your husband in?" And she would choke down her rage and reply--"Why--why he makes paper bags!"

He was sitting there waiting for her, smiling. He was awfully good about waiting for her, and about smiling. It was nice to sit down in this cool, restful place and be looked after. He had a book which she had spoken about the week before, and he had a little pin, a dear little thing with a dog's head on it which he had seen in a window and thought should belong to her. And he was on track of the finest collie in the United States. After all, he thought it would be better for her to have a collie than a bulldog. She was losing ground! She was being very nice to him, and she had firmly intended telling him once for all that she could never marry a man whose name was Tank, and who contributed to the atrocities of fate by making paper bags. And then she had a beautiful thought. Perhaps he would be willing to go away somewhere and live it down. He might go to Boston and go into the book publishing business. Surely publishing books in Boston would go a long way toward removing the stigma of having made paper bags in Chicago. And meanwhile, sighing contentedly, and fastening on her new pin, as long as she was here she might as well forget about things and enjoy herself.

CHAPTER XXI

FACTORY-MADE OPTIMISM

The usual congested conditions existed in Dr. Parkman's waiting room when Georgia arrived a little after five. An attendant who knew her, and who had great respect for any girl Dr. Parkman would see on non-professional business, took her into the inner of inners, where, comfortably installed, sat Professor Hastings.

"Glad to have you join me," he said; "I feel like an imposter, getting in ahead of these people."

"Oh, I'm used to side doors," laughed Georgia.

They chatted about how it had begun to rain, how easy it was for it to rain in Chicago, and in a few minutes the doctor came in.

He nodded to them, almost staggered to a chair, sank into it, and leaning back, said nothing at all.

"Why, doctor," gasped Georgia, after a minute, "can't you _take_ something? Why you're simply all in!"

He roused up then. "I am--a--little f.a.gged. Fearful day!"

"Well, for heaven's sake get up and take off that wet coat!

Here,"--rising to help him--"I've always heard that doctors had absolutely no sense. Sitting around in a wet coat!"

"I wonder," he said, after another minute of resting, "why any man ever takes it into his head he wants to be a doctor?"

"And all day long," she laughed, "I've been wondering why any girl ever takes it into her head she wants to be a newspaper reporter."

"Speaking of the pleasant features of my business," she went on, "I may as well spring this first as last. Here am I, a more or less sensible young woman, come to ask you, a man whose time is worth--well, let's say a thousand dollars a second--what you intend doing about those hospital interns getting drunk last night!"

"My dear Miss Georgia,"--brushing out his hand in a characteristic way which seemed to be sweeping things aside--"go back to your paper and say that for all I care every intern in Chicago may get drunk every night in the week."

"_Bully_ story!"

"And furthermore, every paper in Chicago may go to the devil, and every hospital may go trailing along for company. Oh Lord--I'm tired."

He looked it. It seemed to Georgia she had never understood what tiredness meant before.

"Such a hard day?" Professor Hastings asked.

"Oh--just one of the days when everything goes wrong. Rotten business--anyway. Eternally patching things up. I'd like to be a--well, a bridge builder for awhile, and see how it felt to get good stuff to start with."

"And now, to round out your day pleasantly," laughed Professor Hastings, "I've come to tell you about a boy out there at the university who is in very bad need of patching up."

"What about him?" and it was interesting to see that some of the tiredness seemed to fall from him as he straightened up to listen.

Georgia rose to go, but he told her to stay, he might feel more in the mood for drunken interns by and by.

He arranged with Professor Hastings about the student; and it was when the older man was about to leave that he asked, a little hesitatingly, about Dr. Hubers. "I have been away all summer," he told the doctor, "and have not seen him yet."

Georgia was watching Dr. Parkman. His face just then told many things.

"You will find him--quite natural," he answered, in a constrained voice.

"One hardly sees how that can be possible," said the professor sadly.

"Oh, his pleasantness and naturalness will not deceive you much. Your eyes can take in a few things, and then his voice--gives him away a little. But he won't have anything to say about--the change."

He shook his head. "I'm afraid that's so much the worse."

"Perhaps, but--"

"Karl never was one to get much satisfaction out of telling his troubles," Georgia finished for him.

"Hastings," said the doctor, jerkily, and he seemed almost like one speaking against his will--"what do you make out of it? Don't you think it--pretty wasteful?"

"Yes--wasteful!" he went on, in response to the inquiring look. "I mean just that. There are a lot of people," he spoke pa.s.sionately now, "who seem to think there is some sort of great design in the world. What in heaven's name would they say about this? Do you see anything high and fine and harmonious about it?"

That last with a sneer, and he stopped with an ugly laugh. "They make me tired--those people who have so much to say about the world being so right and lovely. They might travel with me on my rounds for a day or two. One day would finish a good deal of this factory-made optimism."

"Does Dr. Hubers feel--as you do?" Hastings asked, not quite concealing the anxiety in the question.

"How in G.o.d's name could he feel any other way?--though it's hard making him out,"--turning to Georgia, who nodded understandingly. "Just when he's ready to let himself go he'll pull himself together and say it's so nice to have plenty of time for reading, that Ernestine has been reading a lot of great things to him this summer, and he believes now he is really going to begin to get an education. But does _that_ make you feel any better about it? G.o.d!--I was out there the other day, and when I saw the grey hairs in his head, the lines this summer has put in his face, when I saw he was digging his finger nails down into his hands to keep himself together while he talked to me about turning his cancer work over to some other man--I tell you it went just a little beyond my power to endure, and I turned in then and there and expressed my opinion of a G.o.d who would permit such things to happen! And then what did he do? Got a little white around the lips for a minute, looked for just a second as though he were going to turn in with me, and then he smiled a little and said in a quiet, rather humorous way that made me feel about ten years old: 'Oh, leave G.o.d out of it, Parkman. I don't think he had much of a hand in this piece of work. If you must d.a.m.n something, d.a.m.n my own carelessness.'"

"He said that? He can see it like that?"--there was no mistaking the approval in Professor Hastings' eager voice.

"Huh!"--the doctor was feeling too deeply to be conscious of the rudeness in the scoff. "So you figure it out like that--do you? And you get some satisfaction out of that way of looking at it? The scheme of things is very fine, but he must pay the penalty of his own oversight, weakness--carelessness--whatever you choose to call it. Well, I don't think I care much about a system that fixes its penalties in that particular way. When I see men every day who violate every natural law and don't pay any heavier penalty than an inconvenience, when I see useless pieces of flesh and bone slapping nature in the face and not getting more than a mild little slap in return, and then when I see the biggest, most useful man I have ever known paying as a penalty his life's work--oh Lord--that's rot! I have some hymn singing ancestors myself, and they left me a tendency to want to believe in something or other, so I had fine notions about the economy of nature--poetry of science. But this makes rather a joke of that, too--don't you think?" He paused, and Georgia could see the hot beating in his temples and his throat. And then he added, with a quiet more unanswerable than the pa.s.sion had been: "So the beautiful thing about having no G.o.ds at all is that you're so fixed you have no G.o.ds to lose."

The telephone rang then, and there was a sharp fire of questions ending with, "Yes--I'll see her before nine to-night." He hung up the receiver and sat there a minute in deep thought, seeming to concentrate his whole being upon this patient now commanding him. And then he turned to Hastings with something about the boy out at the university, telling him at the last not to worry about the financial end of it, that he liked to do things for students who amounted to something.