In her swift breath of ecstasy Missy forgot to note the twinkle in his eye.
“Oh, I'd love to write society things!” Ed Martin sat regarding her with a strange expression on his face.
“Well,” he said at last, as if to himself, “why not?” Then, addressing her directly: “You may consider yourself appointed official Society Editor of the Cherryvale Beacon.”
The title rolled with surpassing resonance on enchanted ears. She barely caught his next remark.
“What do you say to five dollars a week?” he asked.
Five dollars a week!--Five dollars every week! And earned by herself! Missy's eyes grew big as suns.
“Well, then,” he said, “I'll give you free rein. Just get your copy in by Wednesday night--we go to press Thursdays--and I promise to read every word of it myself.”
There were a thousand questions she'd have liked to ask, but Ed Martin, smiling a queer kind of smile, had turned to his papers as if anxious to get at them. No; she mustn't begin by bothering him with questions. He was a busy man, and he'd put this new, big responsibility on HER--“a free rein,” he had said. And she must live up to that trust; she must find her own way--study up the problem of society editing, which, even if not her ideal, yet was a wedge to who-knew-what? And meanwhile perhaps she could set a new standard for society columns--brilliant and clever...
Missy left the Beacon office, suffused with emotions no pen, not even her own, could ever have described.
Ed Martin, safely alone, allowed himself the luxury of an extensive grin. Then, even while he smiled, his eyes sobered.
“Poor young one.” He sighed and shook his head, then took up the editorial he was writing on the delinquencies of the local waterworks administration.
Meanwhile Missy, moving slowly back up Main Street, was walking on something much softer and springier than the board sidewalk under her feet.
She didn't notice even the cracks, now. The acquaintances who passed her, and the people sitting contentedly out on their shady porches, seemed in a different world from the one she was traversing.
She had never known this kind of happiness before--exploring a dream country which promised to become real. Now and then a tiny cloud shadowed the radiance of her emotions: just how would she begin?--what should she write about and how?--but swiftly her thoughts flitted back to that soft, warm, undefined deliciousness...