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CHAPTER I

JOAN GETS A JOB

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Joan called over her shoulder to Mother, as she scurried around past the lilac bushes by the kitchen windows.

Oh, suppose she were too late!

Tim had gone into the Journal office, just as she had started doing the dishes. Joan rarely minded doing dishes, because the windows above the kitchen sink looked across at the Journal office and she could watch everything that went on over there. Usually, she lingered over the dishes, just as she hustled over the bed making because the bedrooms were on the other side of the house. But to-day, she had done the dishes in less than no time, because she wanted to be nearer the scene of action than the kitchen windows.

She hurried now, though it was rather undignified for a person fourteen years old to run in a public place like this. That was the trouble with living right down town. No privacy. Joan thought of the rows and rows of new homes out at the end of Market Street, and then looked back at her own little home—also on Market Street. It was a tiny, red brick house, tucked in between the Journal office and the county court house, set back behind a space of smooth green lawn. It was like living in a public square. But Joan had lived there all her life and really loved the excitement of it.

Uncle John, who was general manager of the paper, would probably be busy and tell Tim to wait, as though he were just anybody applying for a summer-time job and not his own nephew, Joan’s seventeen-year-old brother.

Joan crossed the green plot to the nearest window of the Journal—she had climbed in and out of those windows as a little girl. She could see Chub, the red-haired office boy, wandering around. He was never very busy this time of the afternoon after the paper was on the press. Joan was as much at home in the Journal office as in her own brick house next door. As a baby, she had often curled up on a heap of newspapers and taken her nap, regardless of the roar and throb of the presses. That was when Daddy had been alive and had been city editor. He had been so proud of his baby girl that he had often taken her to work with him in an afternoon when Mother was busy and things at the office were slack.

She had grown up with the roar and clatter of the machines, and the smell of hot ink, and she loved it all, just as other girls might love a battered old piano in the parlor—just because it spelled home.

Uncle John’s office was at the end of the editorial rooms, just by the swinging door into the composing room. “Sanctum sanctorum” she and Tim called Uncle John’s office. Joan stationed herself out of sight, under the buckeye tree, and peered through the dirty, streaked window. She could see Uncle John’s desk, with its crowded cubby-holes, frayed blotter, and books about to fall off.

She craned her neck and saw Tim standing before the desk, twisting his cap in his hands. Of course, talking to Uncle John wasn’t anything, but asking for a job as a cub reporter was. They were talking together, and Tim looked so serious, Joan would hardly have recognized him.

Oh, he had to get that job! It was during graduation week, when Tim had had to have a new outfit for the commencement exercises, that Mother had done some figuring and suddenly discovered that perhaps there would not be enough money for college for Tim, after all. Tim had had his heart set on going to the State University at Columbus that fall. Joan herself had even dreamed of attending the big football games while he was there, and when they cheered, “Martin! Atta boy, Martin!” she would say, as modestly as she could, “That’s my brother!” Tim was good in all sports—had been a leader in them all through high school. It was the only thing he really liked, but, in a town like Plainfield, excelling in sports offered no method of earning money during the summer months.

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