United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
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 they observe things that
other people miss and because they do not let it appear that they have
observed them. When the great man who is being interviewed blurts out
that which is indiscreet but most important, the cub reporter says:
“That's most interesting, sir. I'll make a note of that.” And so
warns the great man into silence. But the star reporter receives the
indiscreet utterance as though it bored him; and the great man does
not know he has blundered until he reads of it the next morning under
screaming headlines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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