LOCAL COLOR

I do not see why you should not turn this immense amount of unusual information to account,” I told him. “Unlike most men equipped with similar knowledge, YOU have expression. Your style is—”

“Is sufficiently—er—journalese?” he interrupted suavely.

“Precisely! You could turn a pretty penny.”

But he interlocked his fingers meditatively, shrugged his shoulders, and dismissed the subject.

“I have tried it. It does not pay.”

“It was paid for and published,” he added, after a pause. “And I was also honored with sixty days in the Hobo.”

“The Hobo?” I ventured.

“The Hobo—” He fixed his eyes on my Spencer and ran along the titles while he cast his definition. “The Hobo, my dear fellow, is the name for that particular place of detention in city and county jails wherein are assembled tramps, drunks, beggars, and the riff-raff of petty offenders. The word itself is a pretty one, and it has a history. Hautbois—there’s the French of it. Haut, meaning high, and bois, wood. In English it becomes hautboy, a wooden musical instrument of two-foot tone, I believe, played with a double reed, an oboe, in fact. You remember in ‘Henry IV’—

“From this to ho-boy is but a step, and for that matter the English used the terms interchangeably. But—and mark you, the leap paralyzes one—crossing the Western Ocean, in New York City, hautboy, or ho-boy, becomes the name by which the night-scavenger is known. In a way one understands its being born of the contempt for wandering players and musical fellows. But see the beauty of it! the burn and the brand! The night-scavenger, the pariah, the miserable, the despised, the man without caste! And in its next incarnation, consistently and logically, it attaches itself to the American outcast, namely, the tramp. Then, as others have mutilated its sense, the tramp mutilates its form, and ho-boy becomes exultantly hobo. Wherefore, the large stone and brick cells, lined with double and triple-tiered bunks, in which the Law is wont to incarcerate him, he calls the Hobo. Interesting, isn’t it?”

And I sat back and marvelled secretly at this encyclopaedic-minded man, this Leith Clay-Randolph, this common tramp who made himself at home in my den, charmed such friends as gathered at my small table, outshone me with his brilliance and his manners, spent my spending money, smoked my best cigars, and selected from my ties and studs with a cultivated and discriminating eye.

He absently walked over to the shelves and looked into Loria’s “Economic Foundation of Society.”

“I like to talk with you,” he remarked. “You are not indifferently schooled. You’ve read the books, and your economic interpretation of history, as you choose to call it” (this with a sneer), “eminently fits you for an intellectual outlook on life. But your sociologic judgments are vitiated by your lack of practical knowledge. Now I, who know the books, pardon me, somewhat better than you, know life, too. I have lived it, naked, taken it up in both my hands and looked at it, and tasted it, the flesh and the blood of it, and, being purely an intellectual, I have been biased by neither passion nor prejudice. All of which is necessary for clear concepts, and all of which you lack. Ah! a really clever passage. Listen!”

And he read aloud to me in his remarkable style, paralleling the text with a running criticism and commentary, lucidly wording involved and lumbering periods, casting side and cross lights upon the subject, introducing points the author had blundered past and objections he had ignored, catching up lost ends, flinging a contrast into a paradox and reducing it to a coherent and succinctly stated truth—in short, flashing his luminous genius in a blaze of fire over pages erstwhile dull and heavy and lifeless.

It is long since that Leith Clay-Randolph (note the hyphenated surname) knocked at the back door of Idlewild and melted the heart of Gunda. Now Gunda was cold as her Norway hills, though in her least frigid moods she was capable of permitting especially nice-looking tramps to sit on the back stoop and devour lone crusts and forlorn and forsaken chops. But that a tatterdemalion out of the night should invade the sanctity of her kitchen-kingdom and delay dinner while she set a place for him in the warmest corner, was a matter of such moment that the Sunflower went to see. Ah, the Sunflower, of the soft heart and swift sympathy! Leith Clay-Randolph threw his glamour over her for fifteen long minutes, whilst I brooded with my cigar, and then she fluttered back with vague words and the suggestion of a cast-off suit I would never miss.

“Surely I shall never miss it,” I said, and I had in mind the dark gray suit with the pockets draggled from the freightage of many books—books that had spoiled more than one day’s fishing sport.

“I should advise you, however,” I added, “to mend the pockets first.”

But the Sunflower’s face clouded. “N—o,” she said, “the black one.”

“The black one!” This explosively, incredulously. “I wear it quite often. I—I intended wearing it to-night.”

“You have two better ones, and you know I never liked it, dear,” the Sunflower hurried on. “Besides, it’s shiny—”

“Shiny!”

“It—it soon will be, which is just the same, and the man is really estimable. He is nice and refined, and I am sure he—”

“Has seen better days.”

“Yes, and the weather is raw and beastly, and his clothes are threadbare. And you have many suits—”

“Five,” I corrected, “counting in the dark gray fishing outfit with the draggled pockets.”

“And he has none, no home, nothing—”

“Not even a Sunflower,”—putting my arm around her,—“wherefore he is deserving of all things. Give him the black suit, dear—nay, the best one, the very best one. Under high heaven for such lack there must be compensation!”

“You ARE a dear!” And the Sunflower moved to the door and looked back alluringly. “You are a PERFECT dear.”

And this after seven years, I marvelled, till she was back again, timid and apologetic.

“I—I gave him one of your white shirts. He wore a cheap horrid cotton thing, and I knew it would look ridiculous. And then his shoes were so slipshod, I let him have a pair of yours, the old ones with the narrow caps—”

“Old ones!”

“Well, they pinched horribly, and you know they did.”

It was ever thus the Sunflower vindicated things.

And so Leith Clay-Randolph came to Idlewild to stay, how long I did not dream. Nor did I dream how often he was to come, for he was like an erratic comet. Fresh he would arrive, and cleanly clad, from grand folk who were his friends as I was his friend, and again, weary and worn, he would creep up the brier-rose path from the Montanas or Mexico. And without a word, when his wanderlust gripped him, he was off and away into that great mysterious underworld he called “The Road.”

“I could not bring myself to leave until I had thanked you, you of the open hand and heart,” he said, on the night he donned my good black suit.

And I confess I was startled when I glanced over the top of my paper and saw a lofty-browed and eminently respectable-looking gentleman, boldly and carelessly at ease. The Sunflower was right. He must have known better days for the black suit and white shirt to have effected such a transformation. Involuntarily I rose to my feet, prompted to meet him on equal ground. And then it was that the Clay-Randolph glamour descended upon me. He slept at Idlewild that night, and the next night, and for many nights. And he was a man to love. The Son of Anak, otherwise Rufus the Blue-Eyed, and also plebeianly known as Tots, rioted with him from brier-rose path to farthest orchard, scalped him in the haymow with barbaric yells, and once, with pharisaic zeal, was near to crucifying him under the attic roof beams. The Sunflower would have loved him for the Son of Anak’s sake, had she not loved him for his own. As for myself, let the Sunflower tell, in the times he elected to be gone, of how often I wondered when Leith would come back again, Leith the Lovable. Yet he was a man of whom we knew nothing. Beyond the fact that he was Kentucky-born, his past was a blank. He never spoke of it. And he was a man who prided himself upon his utter divorce of reason from emotion. To him the world spelled itself out in problems. I charged him once with being guilty of emotion when roaring round the den with the Son of Anak pickaback. Not so, he held. Could he not cuddle a sense-delight for the problem’s sake?

He was elusive. A man who intermingled nameless argot with polysyllabic and technical terms, he would seem sometimes the veriest criminal, in speech, face, expression, everything; at other times the cultured and polished gentleman, and again, the philosopher and scientist. But there was something glimmering; there which I never caught—flashes of sincerity, of real feeling, I imagined, which were sped ere I could grasp; echoes of the man he once was, possibly, or hints of the man behind the mask. But the mask he never lifted, and the real man we never knew.

“But the sixty days with which you were rewarded for your journalism?” I asked. “Never mind Loria. Tell me.”

“Well, if I must.” He flung one knee over the other with a short laugh.

“In a town that shall be nameless,” he began, “in fact, a city of fifty thousand, a fair and beautiful city wherein men slave for dollars and women for dress, an idea came to me. My front was prepossessing, as fronts go, and my pockets empty. I had in recollection a thought I once entertained of writing a reconciliation of Kant and Spencer. Not that they are reconcilable, of course, but the room offered for scientific satire—”

I waved my hand impatiently, and he broke off.

“I was just tracing my mental states for you, in order to show the genesis of the action,” he explained. “However, the idea came. What was the matter with a tramp sketch for the daily press? The Irreconcilability of the Constable and the Tramp, for instance? So I hit the drag (the drag, my dear fellow, is merely the street), or the high places, if you will, for a newspaper office. The elevator whisked me into the sky, and Cerberus, in the guise of an anaemic office boy, guarded the door. Consumption, one could see it at a glance; nerve, Irish, colossal; tenacity, undoubted; dead inside the year.

“‘Pale youth,’ quoth I, ‘I pray thee the way to the sanctum-sanctorum, to the Most High Cock-a-lorum.’

“He deigned to look at me, scornfully, with infinite weariness.

“‘G’wan an’ see the janitor. I don’t know nothin’ about the gas.’

“‘Nay, my lily-white, the editor.’

“‘Wich editor?’ he snapped like a young bullterrier. ‘Dramatic? Sportin’? Society? Sunday? Weekly? Daily? Telegraph? Local? News? Editorial? Wich?’

“Which, I did not know. ‘THE Editor,’ I proclaimed stoutly. ‘The ONLY Editor.’

“‘Aw, Spargo!’ he sniffed.

“‘Of course, Spargo,’ I answered. ‘Who else?’

“‘Gimme yer card,’ says he.

“‘My what?’

“‘Yer card—Say! Wot’s yer business, anyway?’

“And the anaemic Cerberus sized me up with so insolent an eye that I reached over and took him out of his chair. I knocked on his meagre chest with my fore knuckle, and fetched forth a weak, gaspy cough; but he looked at me unflinchingly, much like a defiant sparrow held in the hand.

“‘I am the census-taker Time,’ I boomed in sepulchral tones. ‘Beware lest I knock too loud.’

“‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he sneered.

“Whereupon I rapped him smartly, and he choked and turned purplish.

“‘Well, whatcher want?’ he wheezed with returning breath.

“‘I want Spargo, the only Spargo.’

“‘Then leave go, an’ I’ll glide an’ see.’

“‘No you don’t, my lily-white.’ And I took a tighter grip on his collar. ‘No bouncers in mine, understand! I’ll go along.’”

Leith dreamily surveyed the long ash of his cigar and turned to me. “Do you know, Anak, you can’t appreciate the joy of being the buffoon, playing the clown. You couldn’t do it if you wished. Your pitiful little conventions and smug assumptions of decency would prevent. But simply to turn loose your soul to every whimsicality, to play the fool unafraid of any possible result, why, that requires a man other than a householder and law-respecting citizen.

“However, as I was saying, I saw the only Spargo. He was a big, beefy, red-faced personage, full-jowled and double-chinned, sweating at his desk in his shirt-sleeves. It was August, you know. He was talking into a telephone when I entered, or swearing rather, I should say, and the while studying me with his eyes. When he hung up, he turned to me expectantly.

“‘You are a very busy man,’ I said.

“He jerked a nod with his head, and waited.

“‘And after all, is it worth it?’ I went on. ‘What does life mean that it should make you sweat? What justification do you find in sweat? Now look at me. I toil not, neither do I spin—’

“‘Who are you? What are you?’ he bellowed with a suddenness that was, well, rude, tearing the words out as a dog does a bone.

“‘A very pertinent question, sir,’ I acknowledged. ‘First, I am a man; next, a down-trodden American citizen. I am cursed with neither profession, trade, nor expectations. Like Esau, I am pottageless. My residence is everywhere; the sky is my coverlet. I am one of the dispossessed, a sansculotte, a proletarian, or, in simpler phraseology addressed to your understanding, a tramp.’

“‘What the hell—?’

“‘Nay, fair sir, a tramp, a man of devious ways and strange lodgements and multifarious—’

“‘Quit it!’ he shouted. ‘What do you want?’

“‘I want money.’

“He started and half reached for an open drawer where must have reposed a revolver, then bethought himself and growled, ‘This is no bank.’

“‘Nor have I checks to cash. But I have, sir, an idea, which, by your leave and kind assistance, I shall transmute into cash. In short, how does a tramp sketch, done by a tramp to the life, strike you? Are you open to it? Do your readers hunger for it? Do they crave after it? Can they be happy without it?’

“I thought for a moment that he would have apoplexy, but he quelled the unruly blood and said he liked my nerve. I thanked him and assured him I liked it myself. Then he offered me a cigar and said he thought he’d do business with me.

“‘But mind you,’ he said, when he had jabbed a bunch of copy paper into my hand and given me a pencil from his vest pocket, ‘mind you, I won’t stand for the high and flighty philosophical, and I perceive you have a tendency that way. Throw in the local color, wads of it, and a bit of sentiment perhaps, but no slumgullion about political economy nor social strata or such stuff. Make it concrete, to the point, with snap and go and life, crisp and crackling and interesting—tumble?’

“And I tumbled and borrowed a dollar.

“‘Don’t forget the local color!’ he shouted after me through the door.

“And, Anak, it was the local color that did for me.

“The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. ‘Got the bounce, eh?’

“‘Nay, pale youth, so lily-white,’ I chortled, waving the copy paper; ‘not the bounce, but a detail. I’ll be City Editor in three months, and then I’ll make you jump.’

“And as the elevator stopped at the next floor down to take on a pair of maids, he strolled over to the shaft, and without frills or verbiage consigned me and my detail to perdition. But I liked him. He had pluck and was unafraid, and he knew, as well as I, that death clutched him close.”

“But how could you, Leith,” I cried, the picture of the consumptive lad strong before me, “how could you treat him so barbarously?”

Leith laughed dryly. “My dear fellow, how often must I explain to you your confusions? Orthodox sentiment and stereotyped emotion master you. And then your temperament! You are really incapable of rational judgments. Cerberus? Pshaw! A flash expiring, a mote of fading sparkle, a dim-pulsing and dying organism—pouf! a snap of the fingers, a puff of breath, what would you? A pawn in the game of life. Not even a problem. There is no problem in a stillborn babe, nor in a dead child. They never arrived. Nor did Cerberus. Now for a really pretty problem—”

“But the local color?” I prodded him.

“That’s right,” he replied. “Keep me in the running. Well, I took my handful of copy paper down to the railroad yards (for local color), dangled my legs from a side-door Pullman, which is another name for a box-car, and ran off the stuff. Of course I made it clever and brilliant and all that, with my little unanswerable slings at the state and my social paradoxes, and withal made it concrete enough to dissatisfy the average citizen.

“From the tramp standpoint, the constabulary of the township was particularly rotten, and I proceeded to open the eyes of the good people. It is a proposition, mathematically demonstrable, that it costs the community more to arrest, convict, and confine its tramps in jail, than to send them as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead of rotting in dungeons. I even drew the figures so fine as to permit him not only to live in the best hotel but to smoke two twenty-five-cent cigars and indulge in a ten-cent shine each day, and still not cost the taxpayers so much as they were accustomed to pay for his conviction and jail entertainment. And, as subsequent events proved, it made the taxpayers wince.

“One of the constables I drew to the life; nor did I forget a certain Sol Glenhart, as rotten a police judge as was to be found between the seas. And this I say out of a vast experience. While he was notorious in local trampdom, his civic sins were not only not unknown but a crying reproach to the townspeople. Of course I refrained from mentioning name or habitat, drawing the picture in an impersonal, composite sort of way, which none the less blinded no one to the faithfulness of the local color.

“Naturally, myself a tramp, the tenor of the article was a protest against the maltreatment of the tramp. Cutting the taxpayers to the pits of their purses threw them open to sentiment, and then in I tossed the sentiment, lumps and chunks of it. Trust me, it was excellently done, and the rhetoric—say! Just listen to the tail of my peroration:

“‘So, as we go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law, we cannot help remembering that we are beyond the pale; that our ways are not their ways; and that the ways of John Law with us are different from his ways with other men. Poor lost souls, wailing for a crust in the dark, we know full well our helplessness and ignominy. And well may we repeat after a stricken brother over-seas: “Our pride it is to know no spur of pride.” Man has forgotten us; God has forgotten us; only are we remembered by the harpies of justice, who prey upon our distress and coin our sighs and tears into bright shining dollars.’

“Incidentally, my picture of Sol Glenhart, the police judge, was good. A striking likeness, and unmistakable, with phrases tripping along like this: ‘This crook-nosed, gross-bodied harpy’; ‘this civic sinner, this judicial highwayman’; ‘possessing the morals of the Tenderloin and an honor which thieves’ honor puts to shame’; ‘who compounds criminality with shyster-sharks, and in atonement railroads the unfortunate and impecunious to rotting cells,’—and so forth and so forth, style sophomoric and devoid of the dignity and tone one would employ in a dissertation on ‘Surplus Value,’ or ‘The Fallacies of Marxism,’ but just the stuff the dear public likes.

“‘Humph!’ grunted Spargo when I put the copy in his fist. ‘Swift gait you strike, my man.’

“I fixed a hypnotic eye on his vest pocket, and he passed out one of his superior cigars, which I burned while he ran through the stuff. Twice or thrice he looked over the top of the paper at me, searchingly, but said nothing till he had finished.

“‘Where’d you work, you pencil-pusher?’ he asked.

“‘My maiden effort,’ I simpered modestly, scraping one foot and faintly simulating embarrassment.

“‘Maiden hell! What salary do you want?’

“‘Nay, nay,’ I answered. ‘No salary in mine, thank you most to death. I am a free down-trodden American citizen, and no man shall say my time is his.’

“‘Save John Law,’ he chuckled.

“‘Save John Law,’ said I.

“‘How did you know I was bucking the police department?’ he demanded abruptly.

“‘I didn’t know, but I knew you were in training,’ I answered. ‘Yesterday morning a charitably inclined female presented me with three biscuits, a piece of cheese, and a funereal slab of chocolate cake, all wrapped in the current Clarion, wherein I noted an unholy glee because the Cowbell’s candidate for chief of police had been turned down. Likewise I learned the municipal election was at hand, and put two and two together. Another mayor, and the right kind, means new police commissioners; new police commissioners means new chief of police; new chief of police means Cowbell’s candidate; ergo, your turn to play.’

“He stood up, shook my hand, and emptied his plethoric vest pocket. I put them away and puffed on the old one.

“‘You’ll do,’ he jubilated. ‘This stuff’ (patting my copy) ‘is the first gun of the campaign. You’ll touch off many another before we’re done. I’ve been looking for you for years. Come on in on the editorial.’

“But I shook my head.

“‘Come, now!’ he admonished sharply. ‘No shenanagan! The Cowbell must have you. It hungers for you, craves after you, won’t be happy till it gets you. What say?’

“In short, he wrestled with me, but I was bricks, and at the end of half an hour the only Spargo gave it up.

“‘Remember,’ he said, ‘any time you reconsider, I’m open. No matter where you are, wire me and I’ll send the ducats to come on at once.’

“I thanked him, and asked the pay for my copy—dope, he called it.

“‘Oh, regular routine,’ he said. ‘Get it the first Thursday after publication.’

“‘Then I’ll have to trouble you for a few scad until—’

“He looked at me and smiled. ‘Better cough up, eh?’

“‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Nobody to identify me, so make it cash.’

“And cash it was made, thirty plunks (a plunk is a dollar, my dear Anak), and I pulled my freight... eh?—oh, departed.

“‘Pale youth,’ I said to Cerberus, ‘I am bounced.’ (He grinned with pallid joy.) ‘And in token of the sincere esteem I bear you, receive this little—’ (His eyes flushed and he threw up one hand, swiftly, to guard his head from the expected blow)—‘this little memento.’

“I had intended to slip a fiver into his hand, but for all his surprise, he was too quick for me.

“‘Aw, keep yer dirt,’ he snarled.

“‘I like you still better,’ I said, adding a second fiver. ‘You grow perfect. But you must take it.’

“He backed away growling, but I caught him round the neck, roughed what little wind he had out of him, and left him doubled up with the two fives in his pocket. But hardly had the elevator started, when the two coins tinkled on the roof and fell down between the car and the shaft. As luck had it, the door was not closed, and I put out my hand and caught them. The elevator boy’s eyes bulged.

“‘It’s a way I have,’ I said, pocketing them.

“‘Some bloke’s dropped ‘em down the shaft,’ he whispered, awed by the circumstance.

“‘It stands to reason,’ said I.

“‘I’ll take charge of ‘em,’ he volunteered.

“‘Nonsense!’

“‘You’d better turn ‘em over,’ he threatened, ‘or I stop the works.’

“‘Pshaw!’

“And stop he did, between floors.

“‘Young man,’ I said, ‘have you a mother?’ (He looked serious, as though regretting his act! and further to impress him I rolled up my right sleeve with greatest care.) ‘Are you prepared to die?’ (I got a stealthy crouch on, and put a cat-foot forward.) ‘But a minute, a brief minute, stands between you and eternity.’ (Here I crooked my right hand into a claw and slid the other foot up.) ‘Young man, young man,’ I trumpeted, ‘in thirty seconds I shall tear your heart dripping from your bosom and stoop to hear you shriek in hell.’

“It fetched him. He gave one whoop, the car shot down, and I was on the drag. You see, Anak, it’s a habit I can’t shake off of leaving vivid memories behind. No one ever forgets me.

“I had not got to the corner when I heard a familiar voice at my shoulder:

“‘Hello, Cinders! Which way?’

“It was Chi Slim, who had been with me once when I was thrown off a freight in Jacksonville. ‘Couldn’t see ‘em fer cinders,’ he described it, and the monica stuck by me.... Monica? From monos. The tramp nickname.

“‘Bound south,’ I answered. ‘And how’s Slim?’

“‘Bum. Bulls is horstile.’

“‘Where’s the push?’

“‘At the hang-out. I’ll put you wise.’

“‘Who’s the main guy?’

“‘Me, and don’t yer ferget it.’”

The lingo was rippling from Leith’s lips, but perforce I stopped him. “Pray translate. Remember, I am a foreigner.”

“Certainly,” he answered cheerfully. “Slim is in poor luck. Bull means policeman. He tells me the bulls are hostile. I ask where the push is, the gang he travels with. By putting me wise he will direct me to where the gang is hanging out. The main guy is the leader. Slim claims that distinction.

“Slim and I hiked out to a neck of woods just beyond town, and there was the push, a score of husky hobos, charmingly located on the bank of a little purling stream.

“‘Come on, you mugs!’ Slim addressed them. ‘Throw yer feet! Here’s Cinders, an’ we must do ‘em proud.’

“All of which signifies that the hobos had better strike out and do some lively begging in order to get the wherewithal to celebrate my return to the fold after a year’s separation. But I flashed my dough and Slim sent several of the younger men off to buy the booze. Take my word for it, Anak, it was a blow-out memorable in Trampdom to this day. It’s amazing the quantity of booze thirty plunks will buy, and it is equally amazing the quantity of booze outside of which twenty stiffs will get. Beer and cheap wine made up the card, with alcohol thrown in for the blowd-in-the-glass stiffs. It was great—an orgy under the sky, a contest of beaker-men, a study in primitive beastliness. To me there is something fascinating in a drunken man, and were I a college president I should institute P.G. psychology courses in practical drunkenness. It would beat the books and compete with the laboratory.

“All of which is neither here nor there, for after sixteen hours of it, early next morning, the whole push was copped by an overwhelming array of constables and carted off to jail. After breakfast, about ten o’clock, we were lined upstairs into court, limp and spiritless, the twenty of us. And there, under his purple panoply, nose crooked like a Napoleonic eagle and eyes glittering and beady, sat Sol Glenhart.

“‘John Ambrose!’ the clerk called out, and Chi Slim, with the ease of long practice, stood up.

“‘Vagrant, your Honor,’ the bailiff volunteered, and his Honor, not deigning to look at the prisoner, snapped, ‘Ten days,’ and Chi Slim sat down.

“And so it went, with the monotony of clockwork, fifteen seconds to the man, four men to the minute, the mugs bobbing up and down in turn like marionettes. The clerk called the name, the bailiff the offence, the judge the sentence, and the man sat down. That was all. Simple, eh? Superb!

“Chi Slim nudged me. ‘Give’m a spiel, Cinders. You kin do it.’

“I shook my head.

“‘G’wan,’ he urged. ‘Give ‘m a ghost story The mugs’ll take it all right. And you kin throw yer feet fer tobacco for us till we get out.’

“‘L. C. Randolph!’ the clerk called.

“I stood up, but a hitch came in the proceedings. The clerk whispered to the judge, and the bailiff smiled.

“‘You are a newspaper man, I understand, Mr. Randolph?’ his Honor remarked sweetly.

“It took me by surprise, for I had forgotten the Cowbell in the excitement of succeeding events, and I now saw myself on the edge of the pit I had digged.

“‘That’s yer graft. Work it,’ Slim prompted.

“‘It’s all over but the shouting,’ I groaned back, but Slim, unaware of the article, was puzzled.

“‘Your Honor,’ I answered, ‘when I can get work, that is my occupation.’

“‘You take quite an interest in local affairs, I see.’ (Here his Honor took up the morning’s Cowbell and ran his eye up and down a column I knew was mine.) ‘Color is good,’ he commented, an appreciative twinkle in his eyes; ‘pictures excellent, characterized by broad, Sargent-like effects. Now this ... this judge you have depicted ... you, ah, draw from life, I presume?’

“‘Rarely, your I Honor,’ I answered. ‘Composites, ideals, rather ... er, types, I may say.’

“‘But you have color, sir, unmistakable color,’ he continued.

“‘That is splashed on afterward,’ I explained.

“‘This judge, then, is not modelled from life, as one might be led to believe?’

“‘No, your Honor.’

“‘Ah, I see, merely a type of judicial wickedness?’

“‘Nay, more, your Honor,’ I said boldly, ‘an ideal.’

“‘Splashed with local color afterward? Ha! Good! And may I venture to ask how much you received for this bit of work?’

“‘Thirty dollars, your Honor.’

“‘Hum, good!’ And his tone abruptly changed. ‘Young man, local color is a bad thing. I find you guilty of it and sentence you to thirty days’ imprisonment, or, at your pleasure, impose a fine of thirty dollars.’

“‘Alas!’ said I, ‘I spent the thirty dollars in riotous living.’

“‘And thirty days more for wasting your substance.’

“‘Next case!’ said his Honor to the clerk.

“Slim was stunned. ‘Gee!’ he whispered. ‘Gee the push gets ten days and you get sixty. Gee!’”

Leith struck a match, lighted his dead cigar, and opened the book on his knees. “Returning to the original conversation, don’t you find, Anak, that though Loria handles the bipartition of the revenues with scrupulous care, he yet omits one important factor, namely—”

“Yes,” I said absently; “yes.”

The elevator boy smiled knowingly to himself. When he took her up, he had noted the sparkle in her eyes, the color in her cheeks. His little cage had quite warmed with the glow of her repressed eagerness. And now, on the down trip, it was glacier-like. The sparkle and the color were gone. She was frowning, and what little he could see of her eyes was cold and steel-gray. Oh, he knew the symptoms, he did. He was an observer, and he knew it, too, and some day, when he was big enough, he was going to be a reporter, sure. And in the meantime he studied the procession of life as it streamed up and down eighteen sky-scraper floors in his elevator car. He slid the door open for her sympathetically and watched her trip determinedly out into the street.

There was a robustness in her carriage which came of the soil rather than of the city pavement. But it was a robustness in a finer than the wonted sense, a vigorous daintiness, it might be called, which gave an impression of virility with none of the womanly left out. It told of a heredity of seekers and fighters, of people that worked stoutly with head and hand, of ghosts that reached down out of the misty past and moulded and made her to be a doer of things.

But she was a little angry, and a great deal hurt. “I can guess what you would tell me,” the editor had kindly but firmly interrupted her lengthy preamble in the long-looked-forward-to interview just ended. “And you have told me enough,” he had gone on (heartlessly, she was sure, as she went over the conversation in its freshness). “You have done no newspaper work. You are undrilled, undisciplined, unhammered into shape. You have received a high-school education, and possibly topped it off with normal school or college. You have stood well in English. Your friends have all told you how cleverly you write, and how beautifully, and so forth and so forth. You think you can do newspaper work, and you want me to put you on. Well, I am sorry, but there are no openings. If you knew how crowded—”

“But if there are no openings,” she had interrupted, in turn, “how did those who are in, get in? How am I to show that I am eligible to get in?”

“They made themselves indispensable,” was the terse response. “Make yourself indispensable.”

“But how can I, if I do not get the chance?”

“Make your chance.”

“But how?” she had insisted, at the same time privately deeming him a most unreasonable man.

“How? That is your business, not mine,” he said conclusively, rising in token that the interview was at an end. “I must inform you, my dear young lady, that there have been at least eighteen other aspiring young ladies here this week, and that I have not the time to tell each and every one of them how. The function I perform on this paper is hardly that of instructor in a school of journalism.”

She caught an outbound car, and ere she descended from it she had conned the conversation over and over again. “But how?” she repeated to herself, as she climbed the three flights of stairs to the rooms where she and her sister “bach’ed.” “But how?” And so she continued to put the interrogation, for the stubborn Scotch blood, though many times removed from Scottish soil, was still strong in her. And, further, there was need that she should learn how. Her sister Letty and she had come up from an interior town to the city to make their way in the world. John Wyman was land-poor. Disastrous business enterprises had burdened his acres and forced his two girls, Edna and Letty, into doing something for themselves. A year of school-teaching and of night-study of shorthand and typewriting had capitalized their city project and fitted them for the venture, which same venture was turning out anything but successful. The city seemed crowded with inexperienced stenographers and typewriters, and they had nothing but their own inexperience to offer. Edna’s secret ambition had been journalism; but she had planned a clerical position first, so that she might have time and space in which to determine where and on what line of journalism she would embark. But the clerical position had not been forthcoming, either for Letty or her, and day by day their little hoard dwindled, though the room rent remained normal and the stove consumed coal with undiminished voracity. And it was a slim little hoard by now.

“There’s Max Irwin,” Letty said, talking it over. “He’s a journalist with a national reputation. Go and see him, Ed. He knows how, and he should be able to tell you how.”

“But I don’t know him,” Edna objected.

“No more than you knew the editor you saw to-day.”

“Y-e-s,” (long and judicially), “but that’s different.”

“Not a bit different from the strange men and women you’ll interview when you’ve learned how,” Letty encouraged.

“I hadn’t looked at it in that light,” Edna conceded. “After all, where’s the difference between interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for some paper, or interviewing Mr. Max Irwin for myself? It will be practice, too. I’ll go and look him up in the directory.”

“Letty, I know I can write if I get the chance,” she announced decisively a moment later. “I just FEEL that I have the feel of it, if you know what I mean.”

And Letty knew and nodded. “I wonder what he is like?” she asked softly.

“I’ll make it my business to find out,” Edna assured her; “and I’ll let you know inside forty-eight hours.”

Letty clapped her hands. “Good! That’s the newspaper spirit! Make it twenty-four hours and you are perfect!”

“—and I am very sorry to trouble you,” she concluded the statement of her case to Max Irwin, famous war correspondent and veteran journalist.

“Not at all,” he answered, with a deprecatory wave of the hand. “If you don’t do your own talking, who’s to do it for you? Now I understand your predicament precisely. You want to get on the Intelligencer, you want to get in at once, and you have had no previous experience. In the first place, then, have you any pull? There are a dozen men in the city, a line from whom would be an open-sesame. After that you would stand or fall by your own ability. There’s Senator Longbridge, for instance, and Claus Inskeep the street-car magnate, and Lane, and McChesney—” He paused, with voice suspended.

“I am sure I know none of them,” she answered despondently.

“It’s not necessary. Do you know any one that knows them? or any one that knows any one else that knows them?”

Edna shook her head.

“Then we must think of something else,” he went on, cheerfully. “You’ll have to do something yourself. Let me see.”

He stopped and thought for a moment, with closed eyes and wrinkled forehead. She was watching him, studying him intently, when his blue eyes opened with a snap and his face suddenly brightened.

“I have it! But no, wait a minute.”

And for a minute it was his turn to study her. And study her he did, till she could feel her cheeks flushing under his gaze.

“You’ll do, I think, though it remains to be seen,” he said enigmatically. “It will show the stuff that’s in you, besides, and it will be a better claim upon the Intelligencer people than all the lines from all the senators and magnates in the world. The thing for you is to do Amateur Night at the Loops.”

“I—I hardly understand,” Edna said, for his suggestion conveyed no meaning to her. “What are the ‘Loops’? and what is ‘Amateur Night’?”

“I forgot you said you were from the interior. But so much the better, if you’ve only got the journalistic grip. It will be a first impression, and first impressions are always unbiased, unprejudiced, fresh, vivid. The Loops are out on the rim of the city, near the Park,—a place of diversion. There’s a scenic railway, a water toboggan slide, a concert band, a theatre, wild animals, moving pictures, and so forth and so forth. The common people go there to look at the animals and enjoy themselves, and the other people go there to enjoy themselves by watching the common people enjoy themselves. A democratic, fresh-air-breathing, frolicking affair, that’s what the Loops are.

“But the theatre is what concerns you. It’s vaudeville. One turn follows another—jugglers, acrobats, rubber-jointed wonders, fire-dancers, coon-song artists, singers, players, female impersonators, sentimental soloists, and so forth and so forth. These people are professional vaudevillists. They make their living that way. Many are excellently paid. Some are free rovers, doing a turn wherever they can get an opening, at the Obermann, the Orpheus, the Alcatraz, the Louvre, and so forth and so forth. Others cover circuit pretty well all over the country. An interesting phase of life, and the pay is big enough to attract many aspirants.

“Now the management of the Loops, in its bid for popularity, instituted what is called ‘Amateur Night’; that is to say, twice a week, after the professionals have done their turns, the stage is given over to the aspiring amateurs. The audience remains to criticise. The populace becomes the arbiter of art—or it thinks it does, which is the same thing; and it pays its money and is well pleased with itself, and Amateur Night is a paying proposition to the management.

“But the point of Amateur Night, and it is well to note it, is that these amateurs are not really amateurs. They are paid for doing their turn. At the best, they may be termed ‘professional amateurs.’ It stands to reason that the management could not get people to face a rampant audience for nothing, and on such occasions the audience certainly goes mad. It’s great fun—for the audience. But the thing for you to do, and it requires nerve, I assure you, is to go out, make arrangements for two turns, (Wednesday and Saturday nights, I believe), do your two turns, and write it up for the Sunday Intelligencer.”

“But—but,” she quavered, “I—I—” and there was a suggestion of disappointment and tears in her voice.

“I see,” he said kindly. “You were expecting something else, something different, something better. We all do at first. But remember the admiral of the Queen’s Na-vee, who swept the floor and polished up the handle of the big front door. You must face the drudgery of apprenticeship or quit right now. What do you say?”

The abruptness with which he demanded her decision startled her. As she faltered, she could see a shade of disappointment beginning to darken his face.

“In a way it must be considered a test,” he added encouragingly. “A severe one, but so much the better. Now is the time. Are you game?”

“I’ll try,” she said faintly, at the same time making a note of the directness, abruptness, and haste of these city men with whom she was coming in contact.

“Good! Why, when I started in, I had the dreariest, deadliest details imaginable. And after that, for a weary time, I did the police and divorce courts. But it all came well in the end and did me good. You are luckier in making your start with Sunday work. It’s not particularly great. What of it? Do it. Show the stuff you’re made of, and you’ll get a call for better work—better class and better pay. Now you go out this afternoon to the Loops, and engage to do two turns.”

“But what kind of turns can I do?” Edna asked dubiously.

“Do? That’s easy. Can you sing? Never mind, don’t need to sing. Screech, do anything—that’s what you’re paid for, to afford amusement, to give bad art for the populace to howl down. And when you do your turn, take some one along for chaperon. Be afraid of no one. Talk up. Move about among the amateurs waiting their turn, pump them, study them, photograph them in your brain. Get the atmosphere, the color, strong color, lots of it. Dig right in with both hands, and get the essence of it, the spirit, the significance. What does it mean? Find out what it means. That’s what you’re there for. That’s what the readers of the Sunday Intelligencer want to know.

“Be terse in style, vigorous of phrase, apt, concretely apt, in similitude. Avoid platitudes and commonplaces. Exercise selection. Seize upon things salient, eliminate the rest, and you have pictures. Paint those pictures in words and the Intelligencer will have you. Get hold of a few back numbers, and study the Sunday Intelligencer feature story. Tell it all in the opening paragraph as advertisement of contents, and in the contents tell it all over again. Then put a snapper at the end, so if they’re crowded for space they can cut off your contents anywhere, reattach the snapper, and the story will still retain form. There, that’s enough. Study the rest out for yourself.”

They both rose to their feet, Edna quite carried away by his enthusiasm and his quick, jerky sentences, bristling with the things she wanted to know.

“And remember, Miss Wyman, if you’re ambitious, that the aim and end of journalism is not the feature article. Avoid the rut. The feature is a trick. Master it, but don’t let it master you. But master it you must; for if you can’t learn to do a feature well, you can never expect to do anything better. In short, put your whole self into it, and yet, outside of it, above it, remain yourself, if you follow me. And now good luck to you.”

They had reached the door and were shaking hands.

“And one thing more,” he interrupted her thanks, “let me see your copy before you turn it in. I may be able to put you straight here and there.”

Edna found the manager of the Loops a full-fleshed, heavy-jowled man, bushy of eyebrow and generally belligerent of aspect, with an absent-minded scowl on his face and a black cigar stuck in the midst thereof. Symes was his name, she had learned, Ernst Symes.

“Whatcher turn?” he demanded, ere half her brief application had left her lips.

“Sentimental soloist, soprano,” she answered promptly, remembering Irwin’s advice to talk up.

“Whatcher name?” Mr. Symes asked, scarcely deigning to glance at her.

She hesitated. So rapidly had she been rushed into the adventure that she had not considered the question of a name at all.

“Any name? Stage name?” he bellowed impatiently.

“Nan Bellayne,” she invented on the spur of the moment. “B-e-l-l-a-y-n-e. Yes, that’s it.”

He scribbled it into a notebook. “All right. Take your turn Wednesday and Saturday.”

“How much do I get?” Edna demanded.

“Two-an’-a-half a turn. Two turns, five. Getcher pay first Monday after second turn.”

And without the simple courtesy of “Good day,” he turned his back on her and plunged into the newspaper he had been reading when she entered.

Edna came early on Wednesday evening, Letty with her, and in a telescope basket her costume—a simple affair. A plaid shawl borrowed from the washerwoman, a ragged scrubbing skirt borrowed from the charwoman, and a gray wig rented from a costumer for twenty-five cents a night, completed the outfit; for Edna had elected to be an old Irishwoman singing broken-heartedly after her wandering boy.

Though they had come early, she found everything in uproar. The main performance was under way, the orchestra was playing and the audience intermittently applauding. The infusion of the amateurs clogged the working of things behind the stage, crowded the passages, dressing rooms, and wings, and forced everybody into everybody else’s way. This was particularly distasteful to the professionals, who carried themselves as befitted those of a higher caste, and whose behavior toward the pariah amateurs was marked by hauteur and even brutality. And Edna, bullied and elbowed and shoved about, clinging desperately to her basket and seeking a dressing room, took note of it all.

A dressing room she finally found, jammed with three other amateur “ladies,” who were “making up” with much noise, high-pitched voices, and squabbling over a lone mirror. Her own make-up was so simple that it was quickly accomplished, and she left the trio of ladies holding an armed truce while they passed judgment upon her. Letty was close at her shoulder, and with patience and persistence they managed to get a nook in one of the wings which commanded a view of the stage.

A small, dark man, dapper and debonair, swallow-tailed and top-hatted, was waltzing about the stage with dainty, mincing steps, and in a thin little voice singing something or other about somebody or something evidently pathetic. As his waning voice neared the end of the lines, a large woman, crowned with an amazing wealth of blond hair, thrust rudely past Edna, trod heavily on her toes, and shoved her contemptuously to the side. “Bloomin’ hamateur!” she hissed as she went past, and the next instant she was on the stage, graciously bowing to the audience, while the small, dark man twirled extravagantly about on his tiptoes.

“Hello, girls!”

This greeting, drawled with an inimitable vocal caress in every syllable, close in her ear, caused Edna to give a startled little jump. A smooth-faced, moon-faced young man was smiling at her good-naturedly. His “make-up” was plainly that of the stock tramp of the stage, though the inevitable whiskers were lacking.

“Oh, it don’t take a minute to slap’m on,” he explained, divining the search in her eyes and waving in his hand the adornment in question. “They make a feller sweat,” he explained further. And then, “What’s yer turn?”

“Soprano—sentimental,” she answered, trying to be offhand and at ease.

“Whata you doin’ it for?” he demanded directly.

“For fun; what else?” she countered.

“I just sized you up for that as soon as I put eyes on you. You ain’t graftin’ for a paper, are you?”

“I never met but one editor in my life,” she replied evasively, “and I, he—well, we didn’t get on very well together.”

“Hittin’ ‘m for a job?”

Edna nodded carelessly, though inwardly anxious and cudgelling her brains for something to turn the conversation.

“What’d he say?”

“That eighteen other girls had already been there that week.”

“Gave you the icy mit, eh?” The moon-faced young man laughed and slapped his thighs. “You see, we’re kind of suspicious. The Sunday papers ‘d like to get Amateur Night done up brown in a nice little package, and the manager don’t see it that way. Gets wild-eyed at the thought of it.”

“And what’s your turn?” she asked.

“Who? me? Oh, I’m doin’ the tramp act to-night. I’m Charley Welsh, you know.”

She felt that by the mention of his name he intended to convey to her complete enlightenment, but the best she could do was to say politely, “Oh, is that so?”

She wanted to laugh at the hurt disappointment which came into his face, but concealed her amusement.

“Come, now,” he said brusquely, “you can’t stand there and tell me you’ve never heard of Charley Welsh? Well, you must be young. Why, I’m an Only, the Only amateur at that. Sure, you must have seen me. I’m everywhere. I could be a professional, but I get more dough out of it by doin’ the amateur.”

“But what’s an ‘Only’?” she queried. “I want to learn.”

“Sure,” Charley Welsh said gallantly. “I’ll put you wise. An ‘Only’ is a nonpareil, the feller that does one kind of a turn better’n any other feller. He’s the Only, see?”

And Edna saw.

“To get a line on the biz,” he continued, “throw yer lamps on me. I’m the Only all-round amateur. To-night I make a bluff at the tramp act. It’s harder to bluff it than to really do it, but then it’s acting, it’s amateur, it’s art. See? I do everything, from Sheeny monologue to team song and dance and Dutch comedian. Sure, I’m Charley Welsh, the Only Charley Welsh.”

And in this fashion, while the thin, dark man and the large, blond woman warbled dulcetly out on the stage and the other professionals followed in their turns, did Charley Welsh put Edna wise, giving her much miscellaneous and superfluous information and much that she stored away for the Sunday Intelligencer.

“Well, tra la loo,” he said suddenly. “There’s his highness chasin’ you up. Yer first on the bill. Never mind the row when you go on. Just finish yer turn like a lady.”

It was at that moment that Edna felt her journalistic ambition departing from her, and was aware of an overmastering desire to be somewhere else. But the stage manager, like an ogre, barred her retreat. She could hear the opening bars of her song going up from the orchestra and the noises of the house dying away to the silence of anticipation.

“Go ahead,” Letty whispered, pressing her hand; and from the other side came the peremptory “Don’t flunk!” of Charley Welsh.

But her feet seemed rooted to the floor, and she leaned weakly against a shift scene. The orchestra was beginning over again, and a lone voice from the house piped with startling distinctness:

“Puzzle picture! Find Nannie!”

A roar of laughter greeted the sally, and Edna shrank back. But the strong hand of the manager descended on her shoulder, and with a quick, powerful shove propelled her out on to the stage. His hand and arm had flashed into full view, and the audience, grasping the situation, thundered its appreciation. The orchestra was drowned out by the terrible din, and Edna could see the bows scraping away across the violins, apparently without sound. It was impossible for her to begin in time, and as she patiently waited, arms akimbo and ears straining for the music, the house let loose again (a favorite trick, she afterward learned, of confusing the amateur by preventing him or her from hearing the orchestra).

But Edna was recovering her presence of mind. She became aware, pit to dome, of a vast sea of smiling and fun-distorted faces, of vast roars of laughter, rising wave on wave, and then her Scotch blood went cold and angry. The hard-working but silent orchestra gave her the cue, and, without making a sound, she began to move her lips, stretch forth her arms, and sway her body, as though she were really singing. The noise in the house redoubled in the attempt to drown her voice, but she serenely went on with her pantomime. This seemed to continue an interminable time, when the audience, tiring of its prank and in order to hear, suddenly stilled its clamor, and discovered the dumb show she had been making. For a moment all was silent, save for the orchestra, her lips moving on without a sound, and then the audience realized that it had been sold, and broke out afresh, this time with genuine applause in acknowledgment of her victory. She chose this as the happy moment for her exit, and with a bow and a backward retreat, she was off the stage in Letty’s arms.

The worst was past, and for the rest of the evening she moved about among the amateurs and professionals, talking, listening, observing, finding out what it meant and taking mental notes of it all. Charley Welsh constituted himself her preceptor and guardian angel, and so well did he perform the self-allotted task that when it was all over she felt fully prepared to write her article. But the proposition had been to do two turns, and her native pluck forced her to live up to it. Also, in the course of the intervening days, she discovered fleeting impressions that required verification; so, on Saturday, she was back again, with her telescope basket and Letty.

The manager seemed looking for her, and she caught an expression of relief in his eyes when he first saw her. He hurried up, greeted her, and bowed with a respect ludicrously at variance with his previous ogre-like behavior. And as he bowed, across his shoulders she saw Charley Welsh deliberately wink.

But the surprise had just begun. The manager begged to be introduced to her sister, chatted entertainingly with the pair of them, and strove greatly and anxiously to be agreeable. He even went so far as to give Edna a dressing room to herself, to the unspeakable envy of the three other amateur ladies of previous acquaintance. Edna was nonplussed, and it was not till she met Charley Welsh in the passage that light was thrown on the mystery.

“Hello!” he greeted her. “On Easy Street, eh? Everything slidin’ your way.”

She smiled brightly.

“Thinks yer a female reporter, sure. I almost split when I saw’m layin’ himself out sweet an’ pleasin’. Honest, now, that ain’t yer graft, is it?”

“I told you my experience with editors,” she parried. “And honest now, it was honest, too.”

But the Only Charley Welsh shook his head dubiously. “Not that I care a rap,” he declared. “And if you are, just gimme a couple of lines of notice, the right kind, good ad, you know. And if yer not, why yer all right anyway. Yer not our class, that’s straight.”

After her turn, which she did this time with the nerve of an old campaigner, the manager returned to the charge; and after saying nice things and being generally nice himself, he came to the point.

“You’ll treat us well, I hope,” he said insinuatingly. “Do the right thing by us, and all that?”

“Oh,” she answered innocently, “you couldn’t persuade me to do another turn; I know I seemed to take and that you’d like to have me, but I really, really can’t.”

“You know what I mean,” he said, with a touch of his old bulldozing manner.

“No, I really won’t,” she persisted. “Vaudeville’s too—too wearing on the nerves, my nerves, at any rate.”

Whereat he looked puzzled and doubtful, and forbore to press the point further.

But on Monday morning, when she came to his office to get her pay for the two turns, it was he who puzzled her.

“You surely must have mistaken me,” he lied glibly. “I remember saying something about paying your car fare. We always do this, you know, but we never, never pay amateurs. That would take the life and sparkle out of the whole thing. No, Charley Welsh was stringing you. He gets paid nothing for his turns. No amateur gets paid. The idea is ridiculous. However, here’s fifty cents. It will pay your sister’s car fare also. And,”—very suavely,—“speaking for the Loops, permit me to thank you for the kind and successful contribution of your services.”

That afternoon, true to her promise to Max Irwin, she placed her typewritten copy into his hands. And while he ran over it, he nodded his head from time to time, and maintained a running fire of commendatory remarks: “Good!—that’s it!—that’s the stuff!—psychology’s all right!—the very idea!—you’ve caught it!—excellent!—missed it a bit here, but it’ll go—that’s vigorous!—strong!—vivid!—pictures! pictures!—excellent!—most excellent!”

And when he had run down to the bottom of the last page, holding out his hand: “My dear Miss Wyman, I congratulate you. I must say you have exceeded my expectations, which, to say the least, were large. You are a journalist, a natural journalist. You’ve got the grip, and you’re sure to get on. The Intelligencer will take it, without doubt, and take you too. They’ll have to take you. If they don’t, some of the other papers will get you.”

“But what’s this?” he queried, the next instant, his face going serious. “You’ve said nothing about receiving the pay for your turns, and that’s one of the points of the feature. I expressly mentioned it, if you’ll remember.”

“It will never do,” he said, shaking his head ominously, when she had explained. “You simply must collect that money somehow. Let me see. Let me think a moment.”

“Never mind, Mr. Irwin,” she said. “I’ve bothered you enough. Let me use your ‘phone, please, and I’ll try Mr. Ernst Symes again.”

He vacated his chair by the desk, and Edna took down the receiver.

“Charley Welsh is sick,” she began, when the connection had been made. “What? No I’m not Charley Welsh. Charley Welsh is sick, and his sister wants to know if she can come out this afternoon and draw his pay for him?”

“Tell Charley Welsh’s sister that Charley Welsh was out this morning, and drew his own pay,” came back the manager’s familiar tones, crisp with asperity.

“All right,” Edna went on. “And now Nan Bellayne wants to know if she and her sister can come out this afternoon and draw Nan Bellayne’s pay?”

“What’d he say? What’d he say?” Max Irwin cried excitedly, as she hung up.

“That Nan Bellayne was too much for him, and that she and her sister could come out and get her pay and the freedom of the Loops, to boot.”

“One thing, more,” he interrupted her thanks at the door, as on her previous visit. “Now that you’ve shown the stuff you’re made of, I should esteem it, ahem, a privilege to give you a line myself to the Intelligencer people.”