Johnny Swanson - Eleanor Updale [17]
So Johnny hoisted himself onto the crossbar, and the two of them delivered all the papers in record time. The doctor told him more about the sanatorium, and passed on another new word – haemoptysis (or spitting up blood). Not many people were out at such an early hour, but those who were waved happily at the old man and the boy. All except Dr Langford’s neighbour, Miss Dangerfield, who always had a sharp contempt for anything out of the ordinary. She was polishing the brass numbers on her garden gate as Johnny and the doctor reached the end of the paper round.
Dr Langford rang the bell on his bike and shouted, ‘Good morning, dear lady. Behold! Your paper!’ as Johnny thrust it into her arms.
That was bad enough for Miss Dangerfield. Anyone might have seen. But it got worse. Johnny and the doctor both stuck out their legs and cheered as the bike freewheeled down the hill back to the shop. Miss Dangerfield had one word for it: ‘Really!’
Johnny got to school just in time, and in class his mind slipped from images of illness back to his money-making scheme. He thought ahead to what he would do after he had raised enough cash to pay the rent. He would keep going with the adverts until he could afford to buy himself a bicycle.
Chapter 9
THE ADVERTISER
While Winnie threw herself into looking for extra work, Johnny got down to business. That night, after his mother had gone to bed, he raided the Peace Mug again and wrote out his Stop Your Baby Wetting the Bed advert, following the pattern of the one for the Secret of Instant Height, which was painfully imprinted on his memory. After school the following day, he hurried through his evening paper round and ran to the headquarters of the Stambleton Echo, a tall building by the canal. He could hear printing machinery thumping away below him as he climbed the steps up to an entrance marked OFFICE.
Johnny pushed open the heavy double doors, panting for breath, just as the woman in charge of the advertising department was getting ready to leave for the day. He’d already worked out what to say. Auntie Ada was going to help him out again. He had taken great care to make his handwriting look as neat and grown up as possible.
‘Excuse me,’ he puffed, standing on tiptoe to see over the high counter that separated the staff from the visiting public. ‘Excuse me, madam. I’ve been sent with a message. My aunt wants to put an advertisement in your paper.’
‘Which paper?’ said the woman impatiently.
Johnny was mystified. ‘The Echo,’ he said.
‘Which Echo? The Hampton, the Balgrave, the Stambleton …’
‘Stambleton,’ said Johnny. ‘I didn’t know you did the others too.’
‘Those, and the Dorford Chronicle, the Mardly Trumpet, the Nethercross Express—’ It sounded as if she was ready to go on for a long time.
Johnny interrupted, ‘They’re all written here?’
‘They’re all printed here. And your aunt can advertise in any or all of them.’
Johnny was ecstatic. He had no idea that his adverts might be seen by so many people. ‘Oh, all of them. I’m sure she’d want that.’
He handed his advertisement to the woman. She put on her glasses and started counting the words. Johnny had already done that several times. He knew that Stop Your Baby Wetting the Bed. Send a postal order for one shilling and a stamped addressed envelope to Box X added up to twenty-one words. It would cost him one shilling and sixpence. He had the money in his pocket. He was slightly worried that it might cost more if the box number was in double figures, like the horrible ‘Box 23’.
‘That will be sixteen shillings and ninepence,’ the lady said, as if it weren’t a small fortune.
‘Oh, I thought it would be one and six,’ said Johnny sheepishly. ‘Twenty-one words. It says so in the paper.’
‘That’s for one advert, for one week, in one paper – and without a box number,’ said the lady.
‘Oh, but Auntie says she must have a box,’ Johnny gulped, on the verge of tears. ‘She doesn’t want strangers to know where she lives. She wants you to collect the