Ross looked out of the window and laughed as he took her hand (which he shook with a long up and down motion), but he was set at better ease by her apparent unrecognition of the fact that the decorations were for her. “Oh, it ain't much, I reckon,” he replied, and continued to look out of the window and laugh. She went to the desk and removed her gloves and laid her rain-coat over a chair near by. “Is this Mr. Harkless's chair?” she asked, and, Fisbee answering that it was, she looked gravely at it for a moment, passed her hand gently over the back of it, and then, throwing the rain-cloak over another chair, said cheerily: “Do you know, I think the first thing for us to do will be to dust everything very carefully.” “You remember I was confident she would know precisely where to begin?” was Fisbee's earnest whisper in the willing ear of the long foreman. “Not an instant's indecision, was there?” “No, siree!” replied the other; and, as he went down to the press-room to hunt for a feather-duster which he thought might be found there, he collared Bud Tipworthy, who, not admitted to the conclave of his superiors, was whistling on the rainy stairway. “You hustle and find that dust brush we used to have. Bud,” said Parker. And presently, as they rummaged in the nooks and crannies about the machinery, he melted to his small assistant. “The paper is saved, Buddie--saved by an angel in light brown. You can tell it by the look of her.” “Gee!” said Bud. Mr. Schofield had come, blushing, to join them. “Say, Cale, did you notice the color of her eyes?” “Yes; they're gray.” “I thought so, too, show day, and at Kedge Halloway's lecture; but, say, Cale, they're kind of changeable. When she come in upstairs with you and Fisbee, they were jest as blue!--near matched the color of our ribbons.” “Gee!” repeated Mr. Tipworthy. When the editorial chamber had been made so Beat that it almost glowed--though it could never be expected to shine as did Fisbee and Caleb Parker and Ross Schofield that morning--the editor took her seat at the desk and looked over the few items the gentlemen had already compiled for her perusal. Mr. Parker explained many technicalities peculiar to the Carlow “Herald,” translated some phrases of the printing-room, and enabled her to grasp the amount of matter needed to fill the morrow's issue. When Parker finished, the three incompetents sat watching the little figure with the expression of hopeful and trusting terriers. She knit her brow for a second--but she did not betray an instant's indecision. “I think we should have regular market reports,” she announced, thoughtfully. “I am sure Mr. Harkless would approve. Don't you think he would?” She turned to Parker. “Market reports!” Mr. Fisbee exclaimed. “I should never have thought of market reports, nor, do I imagine, would either of my--my associates. A woman to conceive the idea of market reports!”