Sally Read Free Page A

quietly, “He will be disappointed if he does not see me… Uncle will. I mean.”
    “Uncle!” The man’s head jerked up. “You mean ter say as how Mr. Wingles is yer uncle?”
    “Yes,” said Sally firmly. “I have just arrived from India. When he last wrote to me, he told me to come straight to the office.”
    “Oh, well, harrumph. In that case, miss, you’d better go right up. ’Ere, Joey!” he said to a small, pert office boy. “This ’ere is Mr. Wingles’s niece. Take ’er up.”
    Still clutching her suitcase, her heart beating swiftly, Sally followed Joey into the small lift. Joey slammed the gates shut with a clang. She had crossed the Rubicon. No going back now.
    In the editor’s outer office a grim female was typing furiously. She unbent on hearing that Sally was the editor’s niece and said she would inform Mr. Wingles of Sally’s arrival. She did not ask Sally’s name. The fact that the girl was the editor’s niece was enough.
    In no time at all Sally found herself in the man’s presence.
    Mr. Wingles was a tall, muscular Scot with ferocious eyebrows.
    He took one look at the trembling Sally, with her crumpled sailor hat, her battered suitcase, and her girlish hair flowing down the back of her tailored suit.
    “Another of ’em,” he snorted with disgust. “No jobs for you, lassie. Get back to your ma.”
    He rang the bell, and the grim secretary leapt in with the alacrity of a jack-in-the-box. “Miss Fleming,” said the editor awfully. “Take this wee lassie away and send her packing. It’s a new trick. This is not my niece.”
    “Wait!” cried Sally desperately. “I can write. I have had work published!”
    “Indeed! And where may I ask have you had your writing published?”
    Sally took a deep breath. “In the
Annual Magazine of the Misses Lelong Seminary for the Daughters of Officers and Gentlemen
… in Bombay. I was the editor.”
    Mr. Wingles leaned back in his chair. “In the—” He began to laugh and laugh. “In the—in the—”
    Miss Fleming ushered Sally out grimly, leaving the editor gasping for words.
    “Now, look here, young woman,” said Miss Fleming. “Tricks like the one you just played could cost me my job. How dare you!”
    Sally’s courage fled. She felt young and silly and alone and frightened. Large unchecked tears began to roll down her cheeks.
    “Oh, goodness!” said Miss Fleming impatiently. “Here, have a handkerchief and sit down.” She waited while Sally gulped and sobbed herself into silence.
    “Now,” said Miss Fleming, adjusting her cardboard wrist protectors, “you’d better tell me about it. You are too young to be running about London on your own.”
    And so Sally told her all about it. About Emily and the children and about seeing the name of the Lobby Correspondent on the front page.
    “Mrs. Service, our Lobby Correspondent,” said Miss Fleming in a dry voice, “is by way of being a relative of the newspaper owner, Lord Picken—if you take my meaning. Now be a good girl and go back home. For all you may think, it’s a man’s world. Where would a young thing like you stay on her own? Do you have relatives in London?”
    Sally shook her head miserably.
    “Then just go home, there’s a good child,” said Miss Fleming in a softer voice.
    Sally nodded dumbly and picked up her suitcase. She turned toward the door wearily. But the little imp who looks after budding journalists was not going to let her escape so easily. And somewhere at the bottom of Sally’s misery he planted a small seed of hope.
    Standing with her head drooping and her hand on the handle, Sally said in a low voice, “Well, one day I’ll make it. Miss Fleming, do you have relatives in London? If you will excuse the personal question.”
    Miss Fleming sighed and took off her hornrimmed glasses and patted her iron-gray hair. “No, child. I am one of the many businesswomen who fend for themselves. I live in a lodging house in Twenty-two Bryant’s Court, off