After buying a newspaper, the carriage he was riding in was about to leave.
Suddenly, someone ran out from the roadside, rushed to the carriage, and seemed to say something to Claude inside.
The carriage stopped. Claude answered something coldly. The person sat down on the ground, at a loss, watching the carriage drive away.
Jenny didn't know what had happened over there, but she knew she shouldn't be curious. After all, no boss wants employees spying on their privacy.
She instinctively averted her gaze. When the newspaper boy returned, she bought a copy and went back into the church to find a seat and read.
After half a day of home rest, the unwelcome Monday arrived.
The weather in New York was gloomy, the ground half-wet and half-dry, but the wind was especially strong, blowing skirts so that from a distance people looked like dandelions.
Jenny almost got blown away halfway there. After great effort, she clocked in, reached her workstation, and sat down at the reception window. She saw Monique flipping through the newly issued issue of Century Weekly.
Jenny hurried over and craned her neck to look. The two short stories she had sorted and edited were now printed in type, occupying the last two spots on the serial fiction page.
She scrutinized them for a while, feeling a tremendous sense of accomplishment.
If only her name could be credited under the column, the sense of achievement would be even greater.
Closing the weekly, Jenny opened the wooden shutter at the window. The author she had met last time approached.
"How is it? How's your story coming along?"
Jenny greeted Sean, who looked troubled, in a familiar tone.
Sean pulled out thick manuscript paper from his bag, looking like it had just been rushed out.
After adding a main storyline, he had simply turned the short story into a novel.
Jenny took it, read it, and kept it on the spot.
"Although the weekly's long-form serial slots are full now, I can take it to the higher-ups and try our luck. Maybe they'll take an interest."
Sean thanked her profusely, but didn't leave in a hurry. Instead, he took out several thick stacks of fragmented old manuscripts from his bag.
"Jenny, these are works written by a friend of mine over the past two years. I think he writes well. Could you take a look?"
Jenny was stunned by the hundreds of pages of yellowed manuscript paper, many of which were almost crumpled.
Out of professional responsibility, she still accepted them and opened them up.
Sean's friend signed as Mr. Torry. He had written a collection of short fairy tales, rich in imagination and infectious in description, but the stories themselves were very vague, and even basic typos were abundant.
Jenny asked curiously, "Why doesn't your friend come himself?"
"He's never submitted before. Actually, he doesn't make a living from this and never expected it to turn into money. Torry is a cook at the K-Club."
Sean explained to Jenny with a downcast face.
Torry's family was poor. He wrote these because his youngest sister had a congenital disability. She could only stay at home all day, and reading these stories was her way of passing the time.
Recently, his sister had fallen even sicker, possibly needing surgery, and they were desperately short of money.
After learning the news, Sean wanted to lend money to Torry, so he rushed to Dawling to sell his own story. The first time he met Jenny, when she promised that the revised version could make money, he immediately agreed.
Now Sean wanted to continue trying his luck for his friend.
After learning about the poor cook's story, Jenny without a word took all that messy collection of short fairy tales and put them in a separate file bag.
"Alright, I'll help him sort these out first, and then find an opportunity to ask. If there's good news, I'll write to let you know."
Jenny didn't consider herself overly kind-hearted, but if these fairy tales didn't have any merit, she wouldn't have agreed on a whim and raised false hopes.
She stated this upfront, and Sean was immensely grateful.
After finishing her window work, Jenny carried a large stack of files and took the hydraulic elevator upstairs, returning to the office.
In the office, Clare had just come out of the break room. Seeing the unusually large pile of manuscripts on Jenny's desk and that she was also putting a stack into her drawer, he took a few extra glances, feeling quite suspicious.
There were already manuscripts for this week's short-story slot, so the manuscript collection work wasn't urgent.
He was afraid that Jenny would do something to steal the spotlight and climb up.
But these days, she had been obediently doing her window work, unlike Fujena who went to Mr. Alpha to recommend herself for outside assignments.
Clare thought for a moment and came around.
Mr. Eliot's promotion of her was actually meant to send a warning to him, Clare. In reality, her editing skills were just barely passable.
Having figured that out, Clare disregarded her and walked away.
As for that Ronald, for some reason, he had gained Mr. Alpha's favor.
It seemed he was already stepping over Frank's clerks and typists to become Mr. Alpha's new favorite.
Clare felt that, at least, it wouldn't affect his position.
Clare had just sat down, his bottom barely warming the chair, when suddenly he saw Mr. Eliot storming in, carrying this morning's issue of Century Weekly.
Mr. Eliot had just accompanied Mr. Alpha and Mr. Baker to the partner's office at the end of the corridor.
He looked displeased, probably because the content of this issue had been criticized by that greenhorn Claude Dawling.