Tales of the City Room
"Give us something as good as that Tenderloin special, Miss Van Dyke," he would say, in open self-gratulation that she had emerged from beneath the angel's wing. At each repetition of the words the girl's heart grew heavier.
She wrote the stories with photographic accuracy, and they were satisfactory, although no other ever contained the brilliant work of that fatal night. She never became reconciled to the fact that the men now treated her as one of themselves, with a good-natured camaraderie, in which, however, the deference of the old days was wholly lacking. She knew that they called her "Little Van Dyke" and that "The Tenderfoot of the Tenderloin" still clung to her as a sobriquet. Also that there was no further reference to the angel that guided her pen. The managing editor's approval and the off-hand kindliness of her associates did not repay her for this lack, which she felt in every fibre of her sensitive nature.
Even the devoted Matthews was changed. He was as respectful, as deferential, as in the old days—even more so, as if he wished to
228
