But there came a day--I should rather have written a day of days--when a letter arrived from a paper--a packet far too small to contain the bulky thing that had been sent. Opening it, Jimmy discovered that a certain wonderful being desired to see him; tremblingly, Jimmy sought the office in his dinner-hour, and inquired for the editor. A small boy with no reverence about him--no lowering of the voice in speaking of so great a personage--took his name up; and presently Jimmy stood in the presence, with his knees knocking together, and a curious dryness in his throat. The editor was a youngish man of a slim appearance and with flaxen hair. He was seated at an untidy desk, with his coat off, and with a pipe that was cold in his mouth. The room appeared to be decorated for the most part with photographs, chiefly of ladies. Photographs large and small--Continental photographs and English; photographs in costume, and photographs in but little costume at all. Paper clippings were all over the floor; and at the opposite side of the desk a pale boy in spectacles was at work upon a drawing that seemed to the unpractised glance of Jimmy already completed. The man looked up at him, scanning him narrowly, and nodded towards a chair. "Well, Mr. Larrance," he said, "and what can we do for you?" Jimmy thought it was rather the other way about, in the sense that he was desirous of knowing what he could do for the editor; but he smiled feebly, and murmured something about a letter he had received. The man was silent for a moment or two, as though debating what to say; finally he looked up, screwing his eyes shrewdly, and spoke. "I suppose you run away with the idea that you're a genius--eh?" Jimmy shook his head and blushed at the mere suggestion, although he had a sneaking feeling that that suggestion might not be so very wrong after all. "Because, if you've got that sort of idea, you're not much good to us. You may be able to write some day; there are indications of it; but you've got a lot to learn. How long's your story?" He took up the precious manuscript from beside him, and carelessly turned over the leaves. Jimmy had not thought of that vital point; he said he wasn't quite sure. "You're like all the rest, my boy," retorted the young man, throwing the packet on his desk. "You write a story to please yourself--and you ramble on, and you fill it with accounts of green trees, and waving grass, and birds, and God knows what; things that everybody knows about, and don't want to read about; and you send us--say twenty thousand words--when we run to anything from five hundred to three thousand. Bless you, you wouldn't look at the paper--would you, now?" Jimmy murmured that he had seen the paper--well, everywhere; and the young man grinned.