"Nonsense!" "Anyhow, I've got a description that her father or her mother or her friends can recognize. The one you and the other papers printed disguised her so that nobody could tell who she was--it might have covered a hundred girls." Rapidly, and without noting the editor's growing impatience, Paul read the two descriptions, then ran on, breathlessly: "All we have to do is print ten or twenty thousand of these and mail them out with the morning edition--separate sheets, posters, you understand?--so they can be nailed up in every post-office within two hundred miles. Send some to the police of all the cities, and we'll have a flash in twenty-four hours." Burns made no comment for a moment. Instead, he looked the young man over angrily from his eager face to his unblacked shoes. His silence, his stare, were eloquent. "Why? Why not?" Anderson demanded, querulously. "I tell you this description isn't right. It--it's nothing like her, nothing at all." "Say! I thought I'd seen the last of you," growled the corpulent man. "Aren't you on to yourself yet?" "Do you--mean that your talk this evening don't go?" Paul demanded, quietly. "Do you mean to say you won't even give me the chance you promised?" "No! I don't mean that. What I said goes, all right, but I told _you_ to identify this girl. I didn't agree to do it. What d'you think this paper is, anyhow? We want stories in this office. We don't care who or what this girl is unless there's a story in her. We're not running a job-print shop nor a mail-order business to identify strayed females. Twenty thousand posters! Bah! And say--don't you know that no two men can write similar descriptions of anybody or anything? What's the difference whether her hair is burnished gold or 'raw gold' or her eyes bluish gray instead of grayish blue? Rats! Beat it!" "But I tell you--" "What's her name? Where does she live? What killed her? That's what I want to know. I'd look fine, wouldn't I, circularizing a dead story? Wouldn't that be a laugh on me? No, Mr. Anderson, author, artist, and playwright, I'm getting damned tired of being pestered by you, and you needn't come back here until you bring the goods. Do I make myself plain?" It was anger which cut short the younger man's reply. On account of petty economy, for fear of ridicule, this editor refused to relieve some withered old woman, some bent and worried old man, who might be, who probably were, waiting, waiting, waiting in some out-of-the-way village. So Anderson reflected. Because there might not be a story in it this girl would go to the Potter's Field and her people would never know. And yet, by Heaven, they _would_ know! Something told him there _was_ a story back of this girl's death, and he swore to get it. With a mighty effort he swallowed his chagrin and, disregarding the insult to himself, replied: "Very well. I've got you this time." "Humph!" Burns grunted, viciously.