Missy blushed. “I just dropped in for a minute,” she began uneasily. “I was just thinking--” She hesitated and paused.
“I was just thinking--that perhaps--” She clasped her hands tightly together and fixed her shining eyes on him in mute appeal. Then:
“You see, Mr. Martin, sometimes it comes over you--” She broke off again.
Ed Martin was regarding her out of friendly blue eyes.
“Maybe I can guess what sometimes comes over you. You want to write--is that it?”
His kindly voice and manner emboldened her.
“Yes--it's part that. And a feeling that--Oh, it's so hard to put into words, Mr. Martin!”
“I know; feelings are often hard to put into words. But they're usually the most worth while kind of feelings. And that's what words are for.”
“Well, I was just feeling that at my age--that I was letting my life slip away--accomplishing nothing really worth while. You know--?”
“Yes, we all feel like that sometimes, I guess.” Ed Martin nodded with profound solemnity.
Oh, Ed Martin was wonderful! He DID understand things! She went ahead less tremulously now.
“And I was feeling I wanted to get started at something. At something REALLY worth while, you know.”
“And I thought, maybe, you could help me get started--or something.” She gazed at him with open-eyed trust, as if she expected him with a word to solve her undefined problem.
Oh, how wonderfully Ed Martin understood!
He shuffled some papers on his desk. “Just what do you want to write, Missy?”
“I don't know, exactly. When I can, I'd like to write something sort of political--or cosmic.”
“Oh,” said Ed Martin, nodding. He shuffled the papers some more. Then: “Well, when that kind of a germ gets into the system, I guess the best thing to do is to get it out before it causes mischief. If it coagulates in the system, it can cause a lot of mischief.”
“Yes, a devil of a lot of mischief,” he went on. “But the trouble is, Missy, we haven't got any job on politics or--or the cosmos open just now. But--”
He paused, gazing over her head. Missy felt her heart pause, too.
“Oh, anykind of a writing job,” she proffered quaveringly.
“I can't think of anything here that's not taken care of, except”--his glance fell on the ornate-looking “society page” of the Macon City Sunday Journal, spread out on his desk--“a society column.”