Page 60 of The Virtues of Christmas
Patience blossomed more gloriously with every hour she spent at MacHugh and Sons, while Dougal watched the earnings increase along with his sense of guilt.
“Did you notice Jake has started smiling?” Dougal murmured, propping his feet on a corner of the desk. “The boy has a beautiful smile.” And a smiling newsboy sold more copies, earned more coin, and had more reason to smile.
Patience had done that, with her rhymes, her roving newsboys, her clever wit on the page.
“Any boy enjoying a steady diet of holiday sweets has cause to smile,” Detwiler said, “while you have become positively glum.”
“I’m Scottish. I’m allowed to be glum.”
“You’re a Scotsman whose coin is multiplying,” Detwiler replied, shifting in his chair. “You enjoy good health, and in Patience Friendly, you’ve found a gold mine. What’s more, she has a gold mine in you. Very few other publishers would have seen her potential, Dougal, much less given her a chance to shine like this. All over London, people are quoting Mrs. Horner and saving their broadsheets to pass on to their friends and neighbors.”
“They’re quoting old Pennypacker too. That was the plan. She’ll hate me if I tell her now, Aloysius.” Dougal nearly hated himself.
“What’s the worst that could happen? You have a rousing spat, and then she sees what a fine scheme you’ve concocted. She’ll settle her feathers and come up with more ways to increase the readership. That woman respects coin of the realm. I suspect there’s some Scots in her, a generation or three back.”
Dougal rose, because he could not stand to be in his office another moment. A subterfuge was in progress on his premises, and every day that went by, the dishonesty he perpetrated bothered him more.
“Patience respects me,” he said, getting into his coat. “I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Where are you off to? I thought you wanted to discuss this letter from the gin widow?” Detwiler brandished a thin, much-folded piece of a paper.
Dougal studied the direction on the letter, jammed his hat on his head, and grabbed his scarf. “Before it starts to damned snow again, I’m going for a walk.”
“Away with you, then, and George and I will manage the lads in your absence.”
“Fire the professor, why don’t you? He’s a pontificating old bore who’s served his purpose.”
Detwiler snorted, and Dougal went on his way. The clerks were enjoying a heated argument about which of the nearby taverns had the best recipe for rum buns, and the printer’s lad was helping himself to an apple from the basket in the window. From the street below, an impromptu glee club had borrowed some of Mrs. Horner’s lyrics for a bit of holiday Handel, and brilliant afternoon sunshine poured in the windows.
All was merry and bright, and Dougal had never dreaded the yuletide season more.
* * *
“How do you endure this?” Patience muttered. “Detwiler claims to be ill, the dratted cat has shredded two days’ worth of work, it’s pouring ice outside, and nobody will buy anything until the weather improves.”
“The lads go from pub to tavern to coaching inn, and they’ll sell a fair amount, despite the weather,” Mr. MacHugh said. “I can buy you some crumpets, if that will help.”
The cat, who’d spent an evening scratching three of Patience’s columns to bits, was draped like so much holiday greenery on the mantel.
“Throwing George out the window might help.”
Mr. MacHugh went to the window and raised the sash. Bitter, coal-smoke air wafted in, though the cold at least revived Patience’s flagging energy.
“Stop being literal, sir.”
He lowered the sash. “I am a publisher. Of course I’ll be literal. George would simply land on the roof of the awning, scramble down the trellis, and come in the back way. He’s a Scottish cat and not as decorative as you might think.”
George’s owner was very decorative. Since kissing Mr. MacHugh more than a week ago, Patience had done little else but notice how thick his lashes were, how lovely his burr, and how the muscles of his forearms flexed when he sat at his desk and wrote. Before the clerks and the trades, he always had his coat on and his neckcloth neatly tied, but in the privacy of his office, he could be less proper.
He was kind to Detwiler, strict but fair with the boys, and scrupulously honest with the printers, authors, and merchants upon whom a publishing house depended.
“I thought a publisher was an idler,” Patience said. “A man who sat about all day, smoking noisome cigars and joining gentleman’s clubs.”
One corner of Mr. MacHugh’s mouth quirked up. “Like a debutante tatting lace? Virtually indolent, but for some light reading?”
“I imagined you could engage in political discourse, which a debutante would never do. Be glad you weren’t consigned to studying fashion plates by the hour, or memorizing Debrett’s.”
What bleak years those had been, what meaningless, empty years. This past week had given Patience the words to describe those years. For nearly a decade, she’d thought the problem had been her failure to secure a husband. The problem was that finding a husband was all young ladies from good families were allowed to do.
