Mr. McCall, jumping up and down behind his glasses, scrutinised her face closely as she began to read. He always did this on these occasions, for none knew better than he that his comfort for the day depended largely on some unknown reporter whom he had never met. If this unseen individual had done his work properly and as befitted the importance of his subject, Mrs. McCall’s mood for the next twelve hours would be as uniformly sunny as it was possible for it to be. But sometimes the fellows scamped their job disgracefully; and once, on a day which lived in Mr. McCall’s memory, they had failed to make a report at all.
To-day, he noted with relief, all seemed to be well. The report actually was on the front page, an honour rarely accorded to his wife’s utterances. Moreover, judging from the time it took her to read the thing, she had evidently been reported at length.
“Good, my dear?” he ventured. “Satisfactory?”
“Eh?” Mrs. McCall smiled meditatively. “Oh, yes, excellent. They have used my photograph, too. Not at all badly reproduced.”
“Splendid!” said Mr. McCall.
Mrs. McCall gave a sharp shriek, and the paper fluttered from her hand.
“My dear!” said Mr. McCall, with concern.
His wife had recovered the paper, and was reading with burning eyes. A bright wave of colour had flowed over her masterful features. She was breathing as stertorously as ever her son Washington had done on the previous night.
“Washington!”
A basilisk glare shot across the table and turned the long boy to stone–all except his mouth, which opened feebly.
“Washington! Is this true?”
Washy closed his mouth, then let it slowly open again.
“My dear!” Mr. McCall’s voice was alarmed. “What is it?” His eyes had climbed up over his glasses and remained there. “What is the matter? Is anything wrong?”
“Wrong! Read for yourself!”
Mr. McCall was completely mystified. He could not even formulate a guess at the cause of the trouble. That it appeared to concern his son Washington seemed to be the one solid fact at his disposal, and that only made the matter still more puzzling. Where, Mr. McCall asked himself, did Washington come in?
He looked at the paper, and received immediate enlightenment. Headlines met his eyes:
GOOD STUFF IN THIS BOY. ABOUT A TON OF IT. SON OF CORA BATES McCALL FAMOUS FOOD-REFORM LECTURER WINS PIE-EATING CHAMPIONSHIP OF WEST SIDE.
There followed a lyrical outburst. So uplifted had the reporter evidently felt by the importance of his news that he had been unable to confine himself to prose:–
My children, if you fail to shine or triumph in your special line; if, let us say, your hopes are bent on some day being President, and folks ignore your proper worth, and say you’ve not a chance on earth–Cheer up! for in these stirring days Fame may be won in many ways. Consider, when your spirits fall, the case of Washington McCall.
Yes, cast your eye on Washy, please! He looks just like a piece of cheese: he’s not a brilliant sort of chap: he has a dull and vacant map: his eyes are blank, his face is red, his ears stick out beside his head. In fact, to end these compliments, he would be dear at thirty cents. Yet Fame has welcomed to her Hall this self-same Washington McCall.
His mother (nee Miss Cora Bates) is one who frequently orates upon the proper kind of food which every menu should include. With eloquence the world she weans from chops and steaks and pork and beans. Such horrid things she’d like to crush, and make us live on milk and mush. But oh! the thing that makes her sigh is when she sees us eating pie. (We heard her lecture last July upon “The Nation’s Menace–Pie.”) Alas, the hit it made was small with Master Washington McCall.
For yesterday we took a trip to see the great Pie Championship, where men with bulging cheeks and eyes consume vast quantities of pies. A fashionable West Side crowd beheld the champion, Spike O’Dowd, endeavour to defend his throne against an upstart, Blake’s Unknown. He wasn’t an Unknown at all. He was young Washington McCall.