ered, in the characteristic dress of the
newspaper man--namely, shirt sleeves and a green shade over his eyes.

"Look here, Ben!" he exclaimed in some excitement. "Here's a
thousand-dollar check just come in for the strike fund. How's that for
the second day?"

"Good enough," said Ben, who would ordinarily have put in a good hour
rejoicing over such unexpected good fortune, but whose mind was now
on other things. "I have to go out of town to-night. You'll be here,
won't you, to lock the presses? And, see here, Leo, what is the matter
with our book page?"

"Pretty rotten page," replied Klein.

"I should say it was--all about taxes and strikes and economic crises.
I told Green never to touch those things in the book reviews.
Our readers get all they want of that from us in the news and the
editorials--hotter, better stuff, too. I've told him not to touch
'em in the book page, and he runs nothing else. He ought to
be beautiful--ought to talk about fairies, and poetry, and
twelfth-century art. What's the matter with him?"

"He doesn't know anything," said Klein. "That's his trouble. He's
clever, but he doesn't know much. I guess he only began to read books
a couple years ago. They excite him too much. He wouldn't read a fairy
story. He'd think he was wasting time."

"Get some one to help him out."

"Who'd I get?"

"Look about. I've got to go home and pack a bag. Ask Miss Cox what
time that Newport boat leaves."

"Newport! Great heavens, Ben! What is this? A little week-end?"

"A little weak brother, Leo."

"David in trouble again?"

Moreton nodded. "He thinks he's going to marry William Cord's
daughter."

Klein, who was Ben's friend as well as his assistant, blanched at the
name.

"Cord's daughter!" he exclaimed, and if he had said Jack-the-ripper's,
he could not have expressed more horror. "Now isn't it queer," he went
on, musingly, "that David, brought up as he has been, can see anything
to attract him in a girl like that?"

Ben was tidying his desk preparatory to departure--that is to say, he
was pushing all the papers far enough back to enable him to close the
roller top, and he answered, absently:

"Oh, I suppose they're all pretty much the same--girls."

"Why, what do you mean?" said Leo, reproachfully. "How can a girl
who's been brought up to be a parasite--to display the wealth of her
father and husband, and has never done a useful thing since she was
born--Why, a woman was telling me the oth