Next morning, Joan did not even hint to Tim that she was planning some time to follow him. It would seem like “tagging” to him. But she must learn all she could about his job. Maybe she could really help him in some way, and then he’d be glad she had taken such an interest.

She hustled about making beds and putting the house in order. She had her regular duties, and in the summer-time they were heavier than when she went to school. Joan did not like housework. But she always tackled it the way she did everything, and was done before she really had much time to think how she hated it. Whenever she demurred at having to do household tasks, when she would rather be over at the Journal, learning about newspapers, Mother would say, “Joan, remember that Louisa Alcott often had to drop her pen for her needle or broom.” Sometimes, Mother almost seemed to understand.

Joan had to stop in the middle of her dusting this morning to answer the telephone. It was Amy asking her to go for a swim.

“I can’t—I tell you, I’ve got a job.” Joan told her for the fourth time. Joan adored swimming, even though the inland city of Plainfield offered nothing more than a dammed-up creek.

A laugh buzzed through the wire. “Jo, don’t be silly.”

It was hard to refuse Amy. She was one of those bossy girls. But Joan hung on, and though Amy coaxed at great length, she was firm.

“You’re going to spoil our vacation!” Finally Amy banged down at her end.

Joan, rising with cramped muscles to resume her work, thought to herself that this was going to be the best vacation she ever had because she—well, Tim really—had a job on the Journal. As she turned from the telephone, she saw her mother’s face full of disapproval. Mother always wanted her to go with Amy, rather than hang around the Journal office.

“How could I go, to-day,” she appealed, “when Tim just starts his job? I don’t know when something may break, and Tim might miss a big story. Why, there might be a big fire right in this block. I have to stick around.”

The disapproval did not leave Mother’s face, but she said nothing.

Everything finished, Joan found it impossible to settle down to reading. It seemed strangely lonesome in the house without Tim. Their vacation had been going on for a whole week now, and the two had been together most of that time, laughing, chattering and bickering with each other. She missed Tim, even if he often did fail to treat her with proper respect.

She wandered down to the kitchen and was grateful for Mother’s timid suggestion that the ice box needed cleaning. Anything to keep busy! She discovered a quantity of milk. Enough for fudge, she decided. Tim would love some when he came home from work that afternoon. She’d make it for a surprise. She followed the directions Amy had written for her in the back of the thick cook book—a new kind of fudge. It turned out beautifully. Mother praised it with lavish adjectives. Joan knew it wasn’t that wonderful, but Mother was always pleased when she took an interest in anything domestic.

Tim came home for lunch and between mouthfuls he told Joan what he had written up that morning—one really sizable obituary. She hoped he had put in all the details that the Journal Style booklet had said were necessary for the well-written obit. That was pretty good for him actually to report something the first day, she thought. She wished he would tell her in minutest detail, moment by moment, what he had done that morning, but boys were so vague in their conversations. He merely said he had “legged” it all over town—a leg man, is what he was called on the newspaper.

Joan was eager to go over to the Journal for the paper as soon as it was off the press to see Tim’s story. Would Chub remember to call her?

She would go over sooner if an excuse offered itself, she decided as she settled down restlessly with a book on the side steps. If only Uncle John would need her for something; or Miss Betty, who did the society notes, would send her out for candy to nibble on, or for an extra hair net or something, as she often did.

About the middle of the afternoon the call came.

“Yoo-whoo!” It was Chub at the Journal window. “Come on over.”

Joan’s book fell on the ground and she hurried over. In the editorial room, she glanced around. Tim was not at his desk—he had told her that he was to have the one right next to Mack’s. He was probably out on a story. She hoped it was a big one.

Mr. Nixon, the editor, was in a good humor and gave the manager’s niece a smile. The editor seldom wore a coat these days. He was usually in vest and shirt sleeves which made him seem younger than he really was. The collar button at the back of his neck always showed. Often he was cross and would bellow, “Get a job on a monthly,” at all the unlucky ones who tried to plead that their stories were not quite finished. He was just as apt to call pretty Miss Betty a nincompoop if she made a mistake, as he was to say, when she wrote up a good article, “A few more stories like this, and the Journal won’t be able to hold you.”

Miss Betty Parker waved hello from her desk by the window. Miss Betty had the distinction of being the only woman on the editorial staff. “Here, woman!” was the way the men often summoned her to the telephone.

There was a pink rose on Miss Betty’s desk. Had Mack, the sport editor, who was there with a green eye shade and a pencil behind his ear, given it to her? Joan thought it must be lovely to write all those society items about the people who lived on the North Side and who gave teas and parties and luncheons and things. Beside that, Miss Betty conducted an Advice to the Lovelorn Column, which Joan read every evening. She signed her answers, Betty Fairfax. Mack tried to make Joan believe that he wrote the questions, but she knew better than that, because they had had them before he came to the Journal, which was only a few months ago.

Somehow, Joan did not like Mack, although he was really almost as good-looking as Tim. Tim was dark, with wavy hair and dark eyes, while Mack was very blond, with a reddish mustache. Tim had been loud in his protest against Mack when he first joined the Journal family, and especially when he had been made sport editor. “That sissy! Imagine him a sport editor.” But later, he admitted that Mack was a smart fellow. “He has a ‘nose for news’ all right and he certainly can write,” Tim had added admiringly.

Mack’s corner had been fixed up with appropriate sport pictures before he came. He had added no new ones. Tim would have.

There was a member of the Journal staff, of whom Joan approved whole-heartedly. That was old James Cook, a veteran reporter, called Cookie by all who knew him. He was fat and old, but kind, and always as gracious to Joan as though she had been Miss Betty’s age.

“Well, well,” he greeted her now, as he shuffled over to the files. “I thought the day wouldn’t be complete without your shining face around here. Especially now with brother Tim on the pay roll. When are you going to steal Miss Betty’s job away from her?”

He was not teasing, like Mack. But Joan was embarrassed. She really did hope to have Miss Betty’s job in a few more years, but it hardly seemed polite to admit it.

“Just as soon as I get to be the star reporter around here on double space rates,” Miss Betty laughed in reply to Cookie, and Joan did not need to answer.

Cookie was one of the nicest men in the world—always ready to help any one. He would even pitch in and help Miss Betty write up social items, pink teas and things when she got rushed. “I can describe a wedding gown as well as any one,” he would brag. He had once been on the New York Banner, but his health had failed and now he was content to putter along here on the Journal, doing desk work. He was liked by every one. He was always willing to answer all Joan’s questions about the newspaper. He had taught her long ago that “news is anything timely that is of interest,” and Joan had learned that phrase by heart before she was ten. He had told her that the word “news” came from the letters of the four points of the compass, north, east, west, and south.

“Cookie,” Joan reminded him, “you’re always saying you are going to tell Chub and me some of your experiences on that big New York newspaper. When are you?”

“Oh—some time,” he drawled, as he ambled off.

Another member of the Journal tribe sauntered up. It was Bossy, the colored janitor. His steel-rimmed spectacles gave his dark face an owlish look. He sniffed at Betty’s rose. “Hit sho looks just like an artificial one, don’t hit now?” he asked, amiably.

There was no squelching Bossy. He was a great talker and every one let him ramble on. He had been the janitor so long that he felt almost as though he owned the paper. No one felt it more keenly when the Journal was “scooped” by the Star, than did this same, good-natured Bossy. He prided himself that he read every word in the Journal every day.

“Your brother gwine be a newspaper reporter, dat what?” He turned to Joan. “Well, he’ll hab to be careful and not make no mistakes. De Journal got to be careful. Mistakes is bad. Bossy knows.” He muttered something to himself.

Tim came back into the office now, with a rather disgusted look on his face, and began pounding his typewriter keys, for all the world like a provoked small boy doing his detested piano practice. Joan went over and glanced over his shoulder at what he was writing. It was a short article asking for cast-off baby things, toys and clothing for the babies of the crowded-to-overflowing day nursery on Grove Street. Of course, Tim would hate a “sissy” assignment like that, but Joan would have enjoyed seeing all the babies and having the matron tell her of the things recently donated.

When he finished that story, he started on the rewrites, stories from the Morning Star dished up in a different style. Joan glanced at his desk. It was cluttered like a real reporter’s. The whole editorial office was untidy. The staff seldom used the tall, green metal wastebasket in the corner. They wadded up papers and aimed at it. Chub often said, “The first person to hit the wastebasket around here will be fired.”

Joan noticed that Tim had tacked a slip of yellow copy paper on the wall just above his typewriter. It read, in the editor’s handwriting:

Ugh! Being a cub reporter was sort of a gruesome job. But Tim did not seem to mind that part of it. Would he really like the work, she wondered. He had never been half so crazy about the Journal as she was.

“They’re running, Jo!” called Chub from the swinging door to the composing room, and Joan hurried after him.

That meant that the paper was being printed. Joan followed Chub “out back” into the composing room where the linotype machines were all silent now. This part of the Journal was just as important as the writing and business end, Joan knew, though Amy did not agree with her. Amy had visited “out back” only once, and then had brushed daintily by the printers in their ink-smeared aprons. Joan didn’t mind the dirty, dim old place, or the rough men. They might be inky and stained, but they were kind, always joking together just as the men in the front offices did. The “front” and “back” were like brothers of an oddly assorted family.

Joan knew all the men back here. The head pressman, the linotype men who often printed her name in little slim lines of lead for her when they weren’t busy. But she had to hold the lines up to the looking glass to read her name. It always made her feel like Alice in Through the Looking Glass.

All about on shelves under the long tables stood little tin trays of type, stacked—stuff ready set for a dearth of news. Joan had learned to read type, too. It was just as easy as anything when you got used to it.

They passed a gray-haired man sitting hunched on a tall stool, reading yards and yards of proof.

“Meet the Dummy!” Chub said, with a wave of his hand.

Joan looked at the man, whom she had seen only once before, with some interest. Chub’s remark was not so impolite as it seemed, for “dummy” is a word used for the plan of the newspaper before it is made up, and names apropos of their work delighted the Journal family. Just like Em, the cat.

He was a middle-aged man, and seemed rather dignified for a proofreader, with his gray hair and blue eyes.

“The office Dummy. He can’t hear a sound or say a word,” Chub stated in his ordinary voice, just at the man’s elbow. “But I’d forgotten that you were introduced to him the other day when you were over. He came last week, you know.”

The man gave Joan a half-smile of recognition. There was something puzzling about him. Perhaps there was about every deaf-mute. It really must be terrible to have to write everything you wanted to say, Joan mused. And not to be able to hear, but still he couldn’t hear the rumble and clatter of the presses, and that might be a blessing, though Joan liked it.

Joan recalled what Chub had told her of Dummy. That he had applied for the job in writing. “I do not speak,” he wrote, “but I can work. I can read proof. I do not have to talk to read proof.” He got the job.

“Dat new proofreader gives me de creeps,” said a voice behind Joan and Chub, and there was Bossy. “Never saying a word, like dat. Hit ain’t natural.”

“Well, it is for a deaf-mute,” explained the office boy.

They went on out to the cement-floored pressroom where the big presses were. They were roaring like thunder, and whirling endlessly back and forth, over and over. Little ridges of tiny blue flames, to speed up the drying of the ink, made blobs of color in the drabness. Leather straps above the presses were slap-slapping to a dull rhythm. It was a dim place, old, musty, ink-reeking, but romantic to Joan. And to think that to-day, this big press was multiplying Tim’s story for the thousands of Journal readers!

The place had a spell for Chub, too, for it was here that he chose to mention the mystery.

“Say, Jo, you remember what I said yesterday? Well, there’s nothing new for me to tell you. When there is, I will. It’s just a mystery, that’s all.”

“But what’s it about?” pleaded Joan. She hated to be kept in the dark.

“It’s—well, I guess I can tell you this much,” he granted. “It’s about—mistakes.” He shouted the last word, to be heard above the roar.

“Sh!” warned Joan. She was bewildered. Mistakes. It seemed to be in every one’s mind. First Tim had mentioned mistakes, then Bossy, and now Chub! She wanted to ask more about the mysterious mistakes, but she knew Chub would tell her when he was ready and no sooner.

They went around to the other side of the big Goss press, where a crowd of newsboys, both white and colored, were waiting for the papers. Joan hardly noticed their grins. She rushed to the levers that were shoving the papers, already folded, and let one be shot right into her hands.

She looked down at the folded paper, opened it out, and searched the front page. Tim’s story wasn’t there. She had expected it would be, with a two-column head, at least. But now she realized that was silly. A new cub reporter wouldn’t make the front page, right off like that! She turned the pages and hunted. On the back page, she found it—about two paragraphs long and under the regular obituary heading. She was thrilled, anyway.

She clasped the damp paper, reeking of fresh ink, to her chest and the inky letters reprinted themselves in a blur upon the front of her white middy. “My brother wrote that!”

Over the paper she caught a glimpse of Dummy, who had left his corner in the other room and appeared now around the big press. Why, the man had rather a scared look. Had he read her lips and was he afraid of her brother, perhaps? Maybe Tim’s job wasn’t so safe as they thought. The man might be plotting against the manager’s nephew. Joan had read of such things, but her thoughts were rather vague.