Chapter III

Their taunts made it embarrassing for Betty when Mr. Huntley did show up at the office again. She left her desk and motioned to him to follow her out in the hall.

“You can’t tell much about mail,” she said consolingly. “People don’t write like they did when radio first started. They sort of take a good program for granted.”

“Wasn’t there any? Are you quite sure?” he gasped.

“Well, there was mine and yours, and the one from your ma.”

“But I told ma to sign her maiden name.”

“She did,” Betty assured him, “but she didn’t stick to the text.”

His face fell.

“Gee,” he sighed, “I told the landlady out where I’m stopping that I was one of the staff artists on WMQZ. Next time I could get her to write in.”

Betty shook her head.

“No, Mr. Huntley, the letters from now on have got to be honest-to-goodness. Henri can smell the phony kind clear out from where they were mailed. I’ve argued the other way, but the really hot feature _does_ get a response that you can’t mistake.

“You’ve got two more chances. Way the program’s filled up, you’ve got Friday afternoon of this week and Tuesday afternoon of next. Of course I liked your program the other day. I’d leave in that ‘You May Not Mean Much to the Multitude’ number, but I’ll give you the address of the song pluggers, and you go over and see them.”

“Wouldn’t do any good,” he lamented. “All the songs I know I’ve picked up from hearing some one else sing on the radio. Practiced on ’em a long time.”

“Then you want to put more feeling into your voice,” Betty advised. “Just sort o’ ‘ease into the mike,’ as Al would say.”

“Will you come up to the studio with me next time, too?”

“’Fraid I can’t,” she said evenly. “You see, the bunch’ve started to kid me a lot. They think—well, that maybe my interest in you is just personal.”

“Gee, I hope it ain’t,” he jerked out. Her eyes narrowed.

“You hope it ain’t,” she echoed, and her voice was chilled.

That was the way it was these days. A girl had to make all the lead plays. And then to no purpose.

If radio lasted, and they still needed a girl to handle applause mail at WMQZ, and she kept her health and her disposition—then she’d probably be keeping office hours, instead of managing a flat, until they carried her off to the Old Ladies’ Home. In another month she’d be twenty-three.

“I’m glad you say the mail don’t really count,” he was saying, eager to catch at a straw.

“Fact is, it does,” she answered coolly. “I might have been blind about your act being a wow.”

“How come?” he inquired, innocently.

Betty bit her lip. Guess it was true, all right, about a woman being mentally beyond a young man the same age. She’d read such was the case in Fanny Fern’s daily column.

“What was the name of the town you come from?” she asked, starting back for the office.

“Elderdale.”

“I thought it would sound like that,” she nodded, listlessly.

“Of course I’m ‘going on’ Friday afternoon,” he called after her. “And Monday again I’ll drop around for my mail.”

“Do that,” she called back, “but I don’t think you’ll need to bring along any bushel basket.”