He slammed the front door shut and struggled into his overcoat.
“Careful of the ice,” he said shortly.
At the bottom of the steps, he stopped, looking at me oddly.
“My God,” he said, with a kind of suppressed groan, “you’d think I gave a damn who she married, wouldn’t you? Well, I don’t. Just so she doesn’t do it thinking she’s Joan of Arc.”
He took my arm and steered me along the slippery sidewalk.
“Look,” he said. “Would you know what happens to manuscripts that go to the Post?”
We crossed the narrow opening of Manning Street toward the square.
“Well,” I said, “the Post——”
“You don’t need to tell me about the Post. I know all about that. I used to go on a tour through the plant with a couple of hundred other kids every week. If you stacked one issue, it would be more than twenty-
