"That's our circulation; you couldn't help seeing it," he said. "But what do you think would happen to us if we printed that"--he indicated Jimmy's manuscript, without even glancing at it--"and shoved about five pages of it down their throats, just to see what they _would_ swallow? What would be the result? I'll tell you." He threw one leg over the arm of the chair, and struck a match; forgot to apply it to the pipe, and blew it out, and dropped it into his waste-paper basket. Jimmy watched him reverently. "We should first of all be deluged with letters from all the smart young men who read us, and snigger at us, and like us; and they'd want to know what the something something we'd printed it for, or where we found it; and they'd offer to do something a great deal better, just to show us what the public wanted. William," he looked across at the boy at the other desk--"give me a copy of the last for Mr. Larrance--will you?" The boy stretched out an arm, without looking up, and handed the man a copy of the paper; the editor, after flicking over the leaves complaisantly, passed it on to Jimmy. "Just look at that," he said. Jimmy looked at the thing a little helplessly--turning over the pages mechanically; then he handed it back to the young man. "I see," he murmured. "No, you don't; you only think you do," retorted the other, not unkindly. "My boy--we ain't out for literature, because we've got a living to make; but we do the thing honestly, and we work pretty hard. Observe, please." He flicked over the first leaf, and pointed dramatically to the page disclosed. "Snippets generally--some American, and some dodged up out of old chestnuts with a new flavour. But"--he held up a forefinger, and winked--"but, I say, doesn't the young man who buys us repeat them over to his friends, and his mother (if the old lady'll stand 'em!), and his girl, and a few others. Page two: a small story, sir, cut straight out of the heart of the Latin Quarter--with a real grisette, and an artist who is going into the Salon in five minutes--and a hopeless love story. Picture in the middle of the grisette--dodged up from a photograph, with the hair altered. About nine hundred words--and I paid eleven and sixpence for it. He's a beginner; but he'll do well presently. And that isn't his right name." "It seems very short," Jimmy ventured to say.