Mrs. Cuttle dimly resented this room. She had nursed her husband in sickness and in health, chosen his meals, mended his pants. She believed she knew him inside out, but for this hint of unexplored territory.
The alderman walked directly to the bookcase and drew out an encyclopaedia. With his wife's taunt rankling in his mind, he opened the book at the section "P," and ran his finger down the pages until he reached "POISONS."
CHAPTER IV. MORNING COCOA
Early next morning, Sonia arrived at the offices of the Riverpool Chronicle. It was a ramshackle building in the old part of the town, and not far from the Waxwork Gallery. The district itself was rather unsavoury. Instead of attaining the dignity of age, it seemed incrusted with the accretions of Time, as though the centuries—tramping through it—had spattered it with the refuse of years.
But Leonard Eden—the owner and editor—liked the neighbourhood. His paper was not only a rich man's hobby, but a refuge from a talkative wife. He was happy in his shabby sunny room, overlooking the stagnant green river, for he was not allowed to talk at home, and he had views which he liked to express on paper.
He left the practical end to his staff; young Wells, the sub editor; Lobb, the reporter; and Horatio, the office boy and the office authority on spelling. If they were not enthusiastic over his news of an amateur addition, Leonard appeared blandly unconscious of the fact.
He was a numb, courteous gentleman, with a long pale face, a monocle, and a stock; and, although he was popularly credited with the brain of a sleepy-pear, his hobby cost him considerably less than a racehorse or a lady.
When he interviewed Sonia at his London hotel, she believed that her appointment was due to the fact that he recognised her flair for journalism. Bubbling with enthusiasm, she lost herself in a labyrinth of words to which he barely listened.
He belonged to a generation that delighted in a pretty ankle, and resented that fact that when skirts rose, imagination ceased to soar. So he admired Sonia's lashes, while he decided that it would be a kindly deed to let her rub off her rough edges for a few months at his office, at a nominal salary. Besides being his god-daughter, he was a relative; her father had recently remarried, and the family horizon was dark with storm.
As for her fine future, he was confident that some young man would soon remove her, painlessly and permanently, from the sphere of journalism.
He lost no time in taking her to the main office and losing her there. Lobb was out, but Wells' dog occupied the editorial chair, while Wells scraped his pipe as a preliminary to work.
Leonard murmured a languid introduction.
"Mum-mm Wells. Miss Thompson. Did I mention her to you, Wells? Mr. Wells will find you some odds and ends and explain anything. Don't overdo it to-day."
There was a moment of stunned silence after the door had closed, while Horatio, in the background, hurriedly smoothed his hair with moistened palms.
"Didn't you expect me?" asked Sonia.
"Well, we'd heard a rumour," replied Wells, "but we didn't actually believe in you."
"Isn't that like my cherished Leonard? By the way, what d'you call him? The 'Chief?'"
"No. 'Buns.'"
"Oh...Well, will you call me 'Thompson,' and treat me just like a man? I mean, I don't want to cramp your style, or have preferential treatment."
In spite of her overture, young Wells already felt the first hint of restriction as he looked at her. She was an attractive young creature, with slanting butterfly brows, generous red lips, and the greyhound build of her generation. She wore the standardised fashion of swagger-coat and small hat, tilted over one eye, but her vivid face saved her from the reproach of mass production.
Young Wells knew instinctively that she was free from herd instinct. She would lead—and he would follow. She would smash precedent, create chaos, upset routine.
Perhaps, he heard, too, faintly in the distance, the clang of closing doors, and fought against his fate; for man is, by nature, a free animal and dreads the thought of the inevitable cage.
But while he regarded her bleakly, he found favour in her eyes. He was rather short and thickset, and she liked his broad shoulders and three-cornered smile.
"It's the dream of my life to work on a paper," she said. "What are you, by the way?"
"I'm rather a composite person," Wells told her. "I'm the sub and the sporting editor, and Kathleen, and Uncle Dick."
"I'll be Kathleen."
"No you won't. You're too young for the Women's Page. You have no idea of the questions you'll have to answer. I've come to the conclusion women have no refinement."
"Don't be absurd...Are you all the staff?"
"No. Lobb's our star turn. He's out now. He covers the water front and I cover the pubs. And here's Horatio."
Soma's smile made Horatio—who was impressionable—her slave.
"Are you going to be a journalist, too?" she asked.
"No, miss. An editor. My mother says there's always plenty of room at the top."
"You go and tell that to the old man, and study his reaction," advised Wells. Then he glanced at the clock. "Ten to eleven, you young slacker."
The youth vanished, after another languishing glance at Sonia. She looked around the big untidy room, with the frosted-glass windows, the sun-blistered paint, the ink-stained table, the battered typewriters—and then she sighed.
"Not a bit like the Pictures?" asked Wells. "One more illusion gone west?"
"It's very peaceful. But I did think of it like—like you said. You know. Telephones ringing like mad and every one using language. Doesn't a big story ever break?"
"Oh, yes. Sometimes a woman sets her chimney on fire on her neighbour's washing day."
"Then—it's not, a real newspaper office?"
"Yes, it is—if you're a real journalist."
There was a rasp in young Wells' voice, which Sonia resented in spite of her plea for non-preferential treatment.
"Well, I've had no experience," she confessed.
"But you're here. That's your answer."
There was a brief silence. Then Wells' dog got down from his chair and pointedly laid his head on Soma's knee, after a preliminary sniff. Young Wells took the hint and relented.
"You shall be Kathleen," he said. "As a matter of fact, a lady has just told Buns that she reads my page to get a good laugh. He had me on the carpet. He's very sensitive over the paper, remember...And you can have the Children's Corner, Film Notes, Poultry World, Gardening—"
"But I don't know—"
"Just lift them from any reliable source. Three parts The Gardener, and one part Beverley Nichols is the mixture for our Gardening Column—"
He broke off at a tinkling sound outside the door.
"Miss Thompson," he said solemnly, "you are about to share in our great moment, when the whole building vibrates with dynamic life."
"Oh, do you mean going to press?" asked Sonia eagerly.
"No."
"But—it can't be putting the paper to bed?"
"Where did you learn your weird language? No. Here it is." He flung open the door. "Eleven o'clock cocoa."
He laughed at Sonia's disappointed face, as Horatio entered with a tray and three steaming