The Red Cross Girl | Page 8

wasted. When,
the night previous, he had been given the assignment he had sulked,
and he was still sulking. Only a year before he had graduated into New
York from a small up-state college and a small up-state newspaper, but
already he was a "star" man, and Hewitt, the city editor, humored him.
"What's the matter with the story?" asked the city editor. "With the
speeches and lists of names it ought to run to two columns."
"Suppose it does!" exclaimed Ward; "anybody can collect type-written

speeches and lists of names. That's a messenger boy's job. Where's
there any heart-interest in a Wall Street broker like Flagg waving a
silver trowel and singing, 'See what a good boy am!' and a lot of
grownup men in pinafores saying, 'This stone is well and truly laid.'
Where's the story in that?"
"When I was a reporter," declared the city editor, "I used to be glad to
get a day in the country."
"Because you'd never lived in the country," returned Sam. "If you'd
wasted twenty-six years in the backwoods, as I did, you'd know that
every minute you spend outside of New York you're robbing yourself."
"Of what?" demanded the city editor. "There's nothing to New York
except cement, iron girders, noise, and zinc garbage cans. You never
see the sun in New York; you never see the moon unless you stand in
the middle of the street and bend backward. We never see flowers in
New York except on the women's hats. We never see the women
except in cages in the elevators--they spend their lives shooting up and
down elevator shafts in department stores, in apartment houses, in
office buildings. And we never see children in New York because the
janitors won't let the women who live in elevators have children! Don't
talk to me! New York's a Little Nemo nightmare. It's a joke. It's an
insult!"
"How curious!" said Sam. "Now I see why they took you off the street
and made you a city editor. I don't agree with anything you say.
Especially are you wrong about the women. They ought to be caged in
elevators, but they're not. Instead, they flash past you in the street; they
shine upon you from boxes in the theatre; they frown at you from the
tops of buses; they smile at you from the cushions of a taxi, across
restaurant tables under red candle shades, when you offer them a seat in
the subway. They are the only thing in New York that gives me any
trouble."
The city editor sighed. "How young you are!" he exclaimed. "However,
to-morrow you will be free from your only trouble. There will be few
women at the celebration, and they will be interested only in

convalescents--and you do not look like a convalescent."
Sam Ward sat at the outer edge of the crowd of overdressed females
and overfed men, and, with a sardonic smile, listened to Flagg telling
his assembled friends and sycophants how glad he was they were there
to see him give away a million dollars.
"Aren't you going to get his speech?", asked Redding, the staff
photographer.
"Get HIS speech!" said Sam. "They have Pinkertons all over the
grounds to see that you don't escape with less than three copies. I'm
waiting to hear the ritual they always have, and then I'm going to sprint
for the first train back to the centre of civilization."
"There's going to be a fine lunch," said Redding, "and reporters are
expected. I asked the policeman if we were, and he said we were."
Sam rose, shook his trousers into place, stuck his stick under his armpit
and smoothed his yellow gloves. He was very thoughtful of his clothes
and always treated them with courtesy.
"You can have my share," he said. "I cannot forget that I am fifty-five
minutes from Broadway. And even if I were starving I would rather
have a club sandwich in New York than a Thanksgiving turkey dinner
in New Rochelle."
He nodded and with eager, athletic strides started toward the iron gates;
but he did not reach the iron gates, for on the instant trouble barred his
way. Trouble came to him wearing the blue cambric uniform of a
nursing sister, with a red cross on her arm, with a white collar turned
down, white cuffs turned back, and a tiny black velvet bonnet. A bow
of white lawn chucked her impudently under the chin. She had hair like
golden-rod and eyes as blue as flax, and a complexion of such health
and cleanliness and dewiness as blooms only on trained nurses.
She was so lovely that Redding swung his hooded camera at her as
swiftly as a cowboy could have covered her with his gun.

Reporters become star reporters because