He turned away so very hastily that he ran against a man--a thin, genteel, unobtrusive person--in citizen's dress, who was standing just behind him. As Ned made a rough boyish gesture of apology he lifted his pale agitated face. The man's keen gray eyes scanned it closely. CHAPTER V Ned gave scant heed to his work that day, so absorbed was he in reviewing the last night's scenes, in considering his position, and in anxious forebodings. Now and then he sought to comfort himself by reflecting that doubtless the worst was over,--only Pete knew that he had been to the theatre, and how could Pete, how could any one, imagine that he had not come out with the other people behind the scenes--employees, actors, and the many various supernumeraries--by way of the side door? After a time he became alarmed lest his manner betray the trouble that beset him. Once when he opened the door of one of the editorial rooms and called out "Copee!" to apprise the magnate presiding at the desk that the printers were waiting, he was dismayed to hear, instead of his wonted peremptory chirp, such a strained, sharp cry that he hardly recognized his own voice. A young man, trying to sustain the heavy draught upon the imagination which writing a book-notice without reading the book must always impose, turned from his work with a growl. "That confounded boy's throat needs oiling! He is just one all-fired creak!" he cried irritably. The little rebuff wounded Ned as an intentional cruelty might have done. His anxiety had made him sensitive and sore. Generally he felt amply able to take care of himself, and his mental attitude toward others might be described in the simple phrase, "Look out!" He was usually ready and efficient in any work entrusted to him, but to-day he was awkward, under foot, out of time and place, and very inattentive and slow to understand. His pallid face wore a hunted, pleading look, of which he was unconscious; and he was on the point of bursting into tears when a momentary notice of it elicited a word of sympathy. He had been sent to the "funny man's" desk in the adjoining room to hurry him up. The "funny man," as the junior compositors called the wit of the staff, did not mind being hurried. There was a laugh still in his eyes as his pencil traced the final words. His face was so ruddy as to accent the light tint of his blond hair as it blowsed over his forehead. He was a robust man with a fine digestion, and the sight of unhappiness was abhorrent to him. "Hungry?" he asked with a comical intonation as the little devil waited. Ned's face mantled with a sickly smile,--very readily, indeed, for the "funny man's" reputation for wit was so well established that everybody laughed at everything he said, and he did not have to crack a _bona fide_ joke more than once or twice a year to sustain it. Thus he became chary of his good things.