Edna Ferber: Fanny Herself

15. CHAPTER FIFTEEN (continued)

Fanny entered. Lasker laid down her card. "Brandeis. That's a good name." He extended his hand. He wore evening clothes, with a white flower in his buttonhole. He must have just come from a dinner, or he was to attend a late affair, somewhere. Perhaps Fanny, taken aback, unconsciously showed her surprise, because Lasker grinned, as he waved her to a chair. His quick mind had interpreted her thought.

"Sit down, Miss Brandeis. You think I'm gotten up like the newspaper man in a Richard Harding Davis short story, don't you? What can I do for you?"

Fanny wasted no words. "I saw the parade this afternoon. I did a picture. I think it's good. If you think so too, I wish you'd use it."

She laid it, face up, on Lasker's desk. Lasker picked it up in his two hands, held it off, and scrutinized it. All the drama in the world is concentrated in the confines of a newspaper office every day in the year, and so you hear very few dramatic exclamations in such a place. Men like Lasker do not show emotion when impressed. It is too wearing on the mechanism. Besides, they are trained to self-control. So Lasker said, now:

"Yes, I think it's pretty good, too." Then, raising his voice to a sudden bellow, "Boy!" He handed the drawing to a boy, gave a few brief orders, and turned back to Fanny. "To-morrow morning every other paper in New York will have pictures showing Mildred Inness, the beauty, on her snow-white charger, or Sophronisba A. Bannister, A.B., Ph.D., in her cap and gown, or Mrs. William Van der Welt as Liberty. We'll have that little rat with the banner, and it'll get 'em. They'll talk about it." His eyes narrowed a little. "Do you always get that angle?"

"Yes."

"There isn't a woman cartoonist in New York who does that human stuff. Did you know that?"

"Yes."

"Want a job?"