Then he tried cutting the thing up; slicing out a paragraph or two here, and a sheet or two there, and reading them after he had joined them carefully; but the real beauty of the thing, Jimmy felt, was gone. He went to bed with a headache; only to dream that the young man was tearing reams of valuable manuscript, while the boy William looked on with an exasperating smile. The next evening Jimmy began to write the whole thing again; for Jimmy was learning his lesson. He got it down to something near the limit arranged in two nights; decided, on an impulse, to take it to the office himself; and was received somewhat coolly by the young man. "We're pretty full up just now," said the young man, scratching his head dubiously, and looking down into the pipe that never seemed to be alight. "However, I'll have a go at it." Jimmy went away, and waited a week. He dared not write anything else; this was to be a test of his efficiency. If he could please this man he would go ahead; there were prospects for him if this matter came out fortunately. At the end of the week he once more climbed the stairs and knocked at the door. The room seemed full of the editor and the pale boy and several other men; all, with the exception of the pale boy, smoking and laughing and talking. The editor detached himself, and came across to Jimmy, evidently in a good temper. "Let's see," he said, with the remainder of a smile that had been the proper compliment to a story he had just heard still lingering about his lips--"didn't I write you?" Jimmy murmured that he had not yet had a letter; he wondered if by any good chance it would ever happen that he would be on such terms of familiarity with the great one as was the gentleman with his hat on the back of his head who had just sat down in the editorial chair and taken one of the editorial cigarettes. "Oh, it's all right," said the young man. "Not quite the idea--in the working out, you'll understand; you seemed to miss it a bit somehow. But I've made it sixteen shillings. You know the office; go there on Friday, and tell 'em who you are. I'll have the account passed through." Jimmy was staggering out at the door when the young man, who had darted back to his desk, came out after him, and called him. He whispered Jimmy on the staircase. "Here's a couple of drawings--they haven't been used for a long time, and you might write up to 'em----" "Write up to them?" asked Jimmy, in perplexity. "Yes--yes," replied the other impatiently. "Make it a thousand words, so that we can space it out well; and write naturally and lightly. I don't care what order you use 'em in, but write so that those will come in as illustrations. Let me have it next week. And, by the way," he added hurriedly, "let the man's figure be the hero. Very necessary, that."