“Well—you see—she confided in me—she said I was the only woman who had given her a decent word in twenty years; and if I told the story she would be in jail to-morrow night. Do you think I’d be so low as to tell it?” “Sentimentality, my dear young woman, is fatal to a newspaper reporter. Suppose the entire staff should go silly; where would the ‘Day’ be?” “It might possibly be a good deal more admirable than it is now.” “We won’t go into a discussion of theory _v._ practice. I want that story.” “You won’t get it.” “Indeed.” He looked at her with cold angry eyes. “The trouble is that you have not been made to feel what the discipline of a newspaper office is—” Patience leaned forward and smiled up audaciously into his face. “You would do exactly the same thing yourself,” she said; “so don’t scold any more. I admit that you frighten me half to death, but all the same I know that you would never send a poor old woman to prison—not to be made editor-in-chief.” He reddened, and looked anything but pleased at the compliment. “Do you know that you have just said that I am a jay newspaper man?” he asked. But Patience only continued to smile, and in a moment he smiled back at her, then, with an impatient exclamation, left her and returned to his desk. VII Two months later Steele asked her to come to the office at six o’clock, an hour at which the evening room was empty, and suggested that she should give up reporting, and start a column of paragraphs. “I should like it better, of course,” said Patience, after he had fully explained the requirements of the new department. “I was going to tell you that I _would not_ go to that Morgue again.” “Oh, you wouldn’t? Well, you stood it rather longer than I thought you would.” “And I’m tired of interviewing insolent conceited people. Oh, by the way, I should thank you for all these nice things you’ve just said to me.” He dropped his business-like manner suddenly. “How do you stand it?” he asked. Then in reply to her look of surprise: “Oh, you know, the Chief, when he went away, told me to look out for you.” Patience immediately became the charming woman accustomed to the homage of man. Steele’s pre-eminence was gone from that moment. “I am remarkably well, thank you, considering how you have bullied me—and I can tell you that I did not fancy at all being ordered about by such an infant.” “Oh! Thanks! But when a man’s too polite he doesn’t get anything done for him—not in this business. And is it a crime to be an editor before you are thirty?” “Oh, you have reason to be proud of yourself.” “You mean that I have the big head. Well, that is the disease of the age, you know. It would never do for a newspaper man to get a reputation for eccentricity. You’ll have it yourself inside of six months if these paragraphs are a success.” “Never! I scorn to be so unoriginal.”