to her apart until after ten. There was, meanwhile, a curious exalted luxury in watching each lost minute threaten him with the approach of the final press time, as he sat in the tea room, imperturbably scratching through the leaves of the latest Fortune.
Lorinda led him, at ten-fifteen, into her little office — just a roll-top desk, a desk chair, one straight chair, and a table piled with heaps of defunct hotel-magazines. It was spinsterishly neat yet smelled still of the cigar smoke and old letter files of proprietors long since gone.
“Let’s hurry, Dor. I’m having a little dust-up with that snipe Nipper.” She plumped down at the desk.
“Linda, read this proof. For tomorrow’s paper. . . . No. Wait. Stand up.”
“Eh?”
He himself took the desk chair and pulled her down on his knees. “Oh, YOU!” she snorted, but she nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder and murmured contentedly.
“Read this, Linda. For tomorrow’s paper. I think I’m going to publish it, all right — got to decide finally before eleven — but ought I to? I was sure when I left the office, but Emma was scared —”
“Oh, EMMA! Sit still. Let me see it.” She read quickly. She always did. At the end she said emotionlessly, “Yes. You must run it. Doremus! They’ve actually come to us here — the Corpos — it’s like reading about typhus in China and suddenly finding it in your own house!”
She rubbed his shoulder with her cheek again, and raged, “Think of it! That Shad Ledue — and I taught him for a year in district school, though I was only two years older than he was — and what a nasty bully he was, too! He came to me a few days ago, and he had the nerve to propose that if I would give lower rates to the M.M.‘s — he sort of hinted it
