Someone to watch over me

But as almost a year passed, they’d both started changing.
    Robert made himself useful around the mansion. He’d even persuaded Mr. Prinney that he could use a few common tools if Mr. Prinney would authorize the purchase.
    Lily spent a lot of time learning about the estate’s holdings and had impressed the lawyer with her grasp of business and the thrift she’d learned after two dreary years of utter poverty.
    But on the other hand, keeping their true situation private set them apart from the villagers they would have to live with. Many of the Voorburgians considered the pair as rich and as useless as Uncle Horatio had known them to be before the Crash.

    Jack Summer was pacing the newspaper office when Lily strolled in.
    “Just the person I was thinking about!“ he said. “I want to cover the Bonus Army March in Washington. Several of Voorburg’s veterans are there, and I think they should be interviewed. I’ve already got enough material for next Monday’s paper and I’d only go for a few days.”
    Lily sat down, wishing it were ladylike to take her shoes off and put her feet up on a chair to refresh them for the journey up the hill. “What do you mean? You’ve been covering it since it started.“
    “Sure I have, but it’s all secondhand. I haven’t learned anything from anyone who’s actually in the march, only other reporters who are covering it and what I hear on the radio. I want to go down there and talk to real people. Especially the ones from here.”
    Lily hesitated. She read every issue before it was published. Mr. Prinney still feared that, without supervision, Jack might go off the rails and print something to bring the paper down in flames.
    “One thing you haven’t really touched on since the very beginning is how and why the march is taking place,“ Lily said.
    “I tried to explain that when I first sniffed out the story, back when Congress started hearings on the Patman bill, which was disputed as long ago as 1929. Stubbins wouldn’t print it. You know what a cream puff he was about anything upset- ting.“
    “But that was years ago. A lot of people will have forgotten the details and background, even if they were told about it.“ She didn’t identify herself as one of them, although she was.
    “You know from what your last guest at Grace and Favor said about the Great War and how horrible it was.“
    “Of course I do. But you and I were children when it was fought.”
    Jack sighed. “That’s not the point. The original bonus bill was passed in 1924 and was to pay every American veteran of the Great War.“
    “How much?“ Lily asked.
    “A dollar and a quarter a day for those who served on the field of battle, a dollar a day for those who served here.“
    “That’s a lot of money,“ Lily said.
    “It is. And it was supposed to earn interest as well—when it was paid out. Which wasn’t supposed to be until 1945.”
    Lily couldn’t disguise her ignorance and sur- prise. “Nineteen forty-five? Twenty-one years later?”
    Jack leaned back in his chair, looking smug at her reaction. “It was criminal to hold it back that long. Mind you, this was five years before the Crash and nobody knew it was coming. Most of the men who hadn’t been gassed or seriously injured had gone back to work. Maybe the point was to give them money for retirement.“ Jack shrugged. “Now most of those veterans who are still alive are out of work and desperate for what’s owed them. They’re willing to forgo the rest of the interest.“
    “How much would it be per person now?”
    “About a thousand smackeroos. More than many of them would make if they were employed.”
    “This is what you need to say again, Jack,”
    Lily said emphatically. “It’s high time people knew.“
    “I knew it then. But I wasn’t allowed to say it, Lily. Remember, I was a new reporter then, with a boss who didn’t want to rock the boat.“
    “So say it now. I know I’m not the only one who is badly informed,“ Lily exclaimed.
    “But I want to say it for the men of Voorburg who are camped in Washington, D.C. That’s why I want to go there. To get firsthand accounts of what they’re suffering to get what the government promised them.“
    “You’ll have to speak to Mr. Prinney about that.
    Who would pay for the train and hotel and your food?“
    “The newspaper, of course. You know how little I’m paid.“
    “You better let me pave the way. You know what a penny-pincher he is.“
    “But it’s