Part 56 (1/2)
”Yes.”
”Do you want something to eat? Or drink? What did you have to drink?” he added, glancing at the empty gla.s.s on the table.
”Certina.”
”Certina?” he queried, uncertain at first whether she was joking. ”How could you get Certina here?”
”Why not? They keep it at all these places. There's quite a bar-trade in it.”
”Is that so?” said Hal, with a vague feeling of disturbance of ideas.
”Which job do you like best: the Certina or the newspaper, Miss Neal?”
”My other boss calls me Milly,” she suggested.
”Very well,--Milly, then.”
”Oh, I'm for the office. It's more exciting, a lot.”
”Your stuff,” said Hal, in the language of the cult, ”is catching on.”
”You don't like it, though,” she countered quickly.
”Yes, I do. Much better than I did, anyway. But the point is that it's a success. Editorially I _have_ to like it.”
”I'd rather you liked it personally.”
”Some of it I do. The 'Lunch-Time Chats'--”
”And some of it you think is vulgar.”
”One has to suit one's style to the matter,” propounded Hal. ”'Kitty the Cutie' isn't supposed to be a college professor.”
”I hate to have you think me vulgar,” she insisted.
”Oh, come!” he protested; ”that isn't fair. I don't think _you_ vulgar, Milly.”
”I like to have you call me Milly,” she said.
”It seems quite natural to,” he answered lightly.
”I've thought sometimes I'd like to try my hand at a regular news story,” she went on, in a changed tone. ”I think I've got one, if I could only do it right; one of those facts-behind-the-news stories that you talked to us about. Do you remember meeting me with Max Veltman the other night?”
”Yes.”
”Did you think it was queer?”
”A little.”
”A girl I used to know back in the country tried to kill herself. She wrote me a letter, but it didn't get to me till after midnight, so I called up Max and got him to go with me down to the Rookeries district where she lives. Poor little Maggie! She got caught in one of those sewing-girl traps.”
”Some kind of machinery?”