The Swing of the Pendulum by Adriana Spadoni

Thompson of the _Chronicle_ was a large, fat man who had cultivated what he considered the proper editorial manner so that even in ordinary conversation he snapped out his sentences as if he were ordering a cub reporter to a fire. He prided himself on being able to do a dozen things at once and his fetish was concentration. One gathered that he could write a better article in a power house than in a library. When Jean entered he was scanning the proofs of the week's edition, making notes on a pad, smoking, and calling three numbers on the telephone. Jean's nerves had worn her almost to the point of interrupting the great man, before he glanced at her.

"I'm going to run a new feature. I want a series of interviews with leading people who are doing things. I don't give a whoop what they do so long as it's for the general good, 'our city,' 'civic betterment,' etc. But I don't want slush. No sob-sister rot. Civic pride and that dope. Herrick says you can do it. The first will be with Dr. Mary Mac Lean. We've run her regularly about every six months since Settlements got popular. You're to get a new angle. When you get the hang of it, you'll have to find your own interviews."

He almost snarled the last word, glared at Jean as if she had taken his time on a personal matter, and attacked his cigar as if he hadn't had one for fifty years. Jean had never heard of Dr. Mary Mac Lean and had no very clear idea of what a Settlement was, but she did not ask. When she had gone, the Managing Editor made a hieroglyphic in his memorandum, favorable to Jean.

As she sat waiting for Dr. Mary, Jean's courage came back. At the worst the doctor could only refuse to talk to her, in which case she would have to do the best she could.

"And an interview where the interviewed refuses to say anything doesn't leave much room for slush."

Steps sounded in the hall and a stocky woman, in a walking skirt that made her appear even shorter, with quantities of fluffy white hair piled on a large head, stood in the doorway, peering nearsightedly through gold pince-nez. She looked like a large, good-natured and freshly washed puppy picking up a scent. Jean went forward.

"Dr. Mary Mac Lean? I am Jean Norris. I 'phoned you about an interview."

The pince-nez flew off as if Dr. Mary had pressed a button somewhere about her plump person, and Jean smiled. Dr. Mary returned the smile. Without the thick lenses of the glasses her eyes were small but very bright. They were like two little searchlights, ready to be turned on any fact. When she smiled, the corners crinkled into wrinkles.

"Well, go right on. I suppose you're primed to the hilt. " Dr. Mary took a deep chair and motioned Jean to another. "What's it going to be this time? Poverty, sin, crime, religion, the Social Evil, the plague, red or white, suffrage, minimum wage, I. W. W. -ism, organized labor, inefficiency of the workingman, college education, or How I Went Into the Work?"

"I don't know. You see," Jean answered in a sudden resolve to take the doctor into her confidence, "I'm very specially at sea. I don't know a thing about any of those things, not even enough to ask for enlightenment. I never heard of you up till an hour ago and would hate to be put on a stand to tell what a Settlement was. I know you do wonderful things with the poor, but I don't know whether you pay their rent, or make them send their children to school. It's because I don't know anything about you that they sent me. They want something new that won't drivel."

Dr. Mary laughed till the tears stood in her twinkling blue eyes.

"My dear, that's the most adequate explanation I ever got from an interviewer, and the Lord knows I've sampled them all. So they're after something new that won't drivel. " She bent forward with exaggerated caution. "Do you know, Miss Norris, I have imperiled my immortal soul and ruined my vocabulary, reading those interviews with myself. They've called me everything from Feminine Tolstoy to All Womanhood's Sister. Now, would you like to be called All Womanhood's Sister because you installed three washtubs in an outhouse for some poor women?"

"I should loathe being called All Womanhood's Sister for any reason. But is there anything they haven't asked you?"

Dr. Mary cocked her head to one side like a badly proportioned bird and nodded:

"Yes. Nobody has ever had sense enough yet to ask me if there isn't something I want to tell them. They always come with their ammunition ready and it amuses me to watch them shoot wild."

"Then I qualify for 'the new angle,' for I haven't a bullet with me. Will you tell me, Dr. Mac Lean, if there's anything you want to say?"

Dr. Mary's face sobered. "Perhaps I can better show you. Come."

The next was a wonderful hour to Jean. She felt as if the doctor were going before her, tearing down walls, opening worlds she had never glimpsed. At the door of the last room, Dr. Mary paused.

"I want you to meet one of our girls. In some ways she combines all the problems we have -- economic, social, educational. And there are many like her."

The doctor turned the handle and they entered a large, well-lighted room, fitted with sewing machines. A dozen dark women were busy sewing, and their laughter mingled with the whir of the machines. They all smiled and gave greetings in strange broken phrases of English, as Dr. Mary, followed by Jean, crossed to the farthest corner where a girl of nineteen was sewing furiously. She stopped and looked up, smiling.