to edit The Mother’s Corner.’
“It’d be about the same in the other offices, too,” he thought. “‘Sorry, nothing to-day, but there might be next month. Drop in again sometime after six weeks or so and meanwhile I’ll let you know if anything turns up. Yes, I can remember your address. Don’t slam the door as you go out. Most people seem to have been born in a barn.’
“Besides,” he continued to himself, fiercely, “what is there in it? They’ll take your youth, all your strength and energy, and give you a measly living in exchange. They’ll fill you with excitement till you’re never good for anything else, any more than a cavalry horse is fitted to pull a vegetable wagon. Then, when you’re old, they’ve got no use for you!”
Before his mental vision, in pitiful array, came that unhappy procession of hacks that files, day in and day out, along Newspaper Row, drawn by every instinct to the arena that holds nothing for them but a meagre, uncertain pittance, dwindling slowly to charity.
“That’s where I’d be at the last of it,” muttered Harlan, savagely, “with even the cubs offering me the price of a drink to get out. And Dorothy – good God! Where would Dorothy be?”
He clenched his fists and marched up and down the room in utter despair. “Why,” he breathed, “why wasn’t I taught to do something honest, instead of being cursed with this itch to write? A carpenter, a bricklayer, a stone-mason, – any one of ’em has a better chance than I!”
And yet, even then, Harlan saw clearly that save where some vast cathedral reared its unnumbered spires, the mason and the bricklayer were without significance; that even the builders were remembered only because of the great uses to which their buildings were put. “That, too, through print,” he murmured. “It all comes down to the printed page at last.”
On a table, near by, was a sheaf of rough copy paper, and six or eight carefully sharpened pencils – the dull, meaningless stone waiting for the flint that should strike it into flame. Day after day the table had stood by the window, without result, save in Harlan’s uneasy conscience.
“I’m only a tramp,” he said, aloud, “and I’ve known it, all along.”
He sat down by the table and took up a pencil, but no words came. Remorsefully, he wrote to an acquaintance – a man who had a book published every year and filled in the intervening time with magazine work and newspaper specials. He sealed the letter and addressed it idly, then tossed it aside purposelessly.
“Loafer!” The memory of it stung him like a lash, and, completely overwhelmed with shame, he hid his face in his hands.
Suddenly, a pair of soft arms stole around his neck, a childish, tear-wet cheek was pressed close to his, and a sweet voice whispered, tenderly: “Dear, I’m sorry! I’m so sorry I can’t live another minute unless you tell me you forgive me!”
“Am I really a loafer?” asked Harlan, half an hour later.
“Indeed you’re not,” answered Dorothy, her trustful eyes looking straight into his; “you’re absolutely the most adorable boy in the whole world, and it’s me that knows it!”
“As long as you know it,” returned Harlan, seriously, “I don’t care a hang what other people think.”
“Now, tell me,” continued Dorothy, “how near are we to being broke?”
Obediently, Harlan turned his pockets inside out and piled his worldly wealth on the table.
“Three hundred and seventy-four dollars and sixteen cents,” she said, when she had finished counting. “Why, we’re almost rich, and a little while ago you tried to make me think we were poor!”
“It’s all I have, Dorothy – every blooming cent, except one dollar in the savings bank. Sort of a nest egg I had left,” he explained.
“Wait a minute,” she said, reaching down into her collar and drawing up a loop of worn ribbon. “Straight front corset,” she observed, flushing, “makes a nice pocket for almost everything.” She drew up a chamois-skin bag, of an unprepossessing mouse colour, and emptied out a roll of bills. “Two hundred and twelve dollars,” she said, proudly, “and eighty-three cents and four postage stamps in my purse.
“I saved it,” she continued, hastily, “for an emergency, and I wanted some silk stockings and a French embroidered corset and some handmade lingerie worse than you can ever know. Wasn’t I a brave, heroic, noble woman?”
“Indeed you were,” he cried, “but, Dorothy, you know I can’t touch your money!”
“Why not?” she demanded.
“Because – because – because it isn’t right. Do you think I’m cad enough to live on a woman’s earnings?”
“Harlan,” said Dorothy, kindly, “don’t be a fool. You’ll take my whole heart and soul and life – all that I have been and all that I’m going to be – and be glad to get it, and now you’re balking at ten cents that I happened to have in my stocking when I took the fatal step.”
“Dear heart, don’t. It’s different – tremendously different. Can’t you see that it is?”
“Do you mean that I’m not worth as much as two hundred and twelve dollars and eighty-three cents and four postage stamps?”
“Darling, you’re worth more than all the rest of the world put together. Don’t talk to me like that. But I can’t touch your money, truly, dear, I can’t; so don’t ask me.”
“Idiot,” cried Dorothy, with tears raining down her face, “don’t you know I’d go with you if you had to grind an organ in the street, and collect the money for you in a tin cup till we got enough for a monkey? What kind of a dinky little silver-plated wedding present do you think I am, anyway? You – ”
The rest of it was sobbed out, incoherently enough, on his hitherto immaculate shirt-front. “You don’t mind,” she whispered, “if I cry down your neck, do you?”
“If you’re going to cry,” he answered, his voice trembling, “this is the one place for you to do it, but I don’t want you to cry.”
“I won’t, then,” she said, wiping her eyes on a wet and crumpled handkerchief. In a time astonishingly brief to one hitherto unfamiliar with the lachrymal function, her sobs had ceased.
“You’ve made me cry nearly a quart since morning,” she went on, with assumed severity, “and I hope you’ll behave so well from now on that I’ll never have to do it again. Look here.”
She led him to the window, where a pair of robins were building a nest in the boughs of a maple close by. “Do you see those birds?” she demanded, pointing at them with a dimpled, rosy forefinger.
“Yes, what of it?”
“Well, they’re married, aren’t they?”
“I hope they are,” laughed Harlan, “or at least engaged.”
“Who’s bringing the straw and feathers for the nest?” she asked.
“Both, apparently,” he replied, unwillingly.
“Why isn’t she rocking herself on a bough, and keeping her nails nice, and fixing her feathers in the latest style, or perhaps
