ew so well:

"No personalities shall be published in a paper I control."

He had said that on Sunday, when she had pleaded for a freer hand. Well,
he could hardly call the announcement of an engagement a personality, and,
supposing he did, how easy to convince him that it was nothing of the
kind!

She dashed off her description of the Convent kettledrum, and added the
paragraphs we know of, each one accentuated by an explosion of asterisks,
and gave the blotty sheets to Young Evans, who combined in his sole person
the offices of sub-editor, engineer, chief-compositor, feeder, and devil.

Young Evans, who, next to the single-cylinder printing-press driven by the
little oil-engine that had sustained a shell-casualty at the beginning of
the siege, adored Lady Hannah, vanished behind the corrugated partition
that separated the office from the printing-room, and presently came back
in inky shirt-sleeves with a smear of lubricating-oil upon his forehead,
and laid the wet slips upon the Editorial table. Then he went back, and
fell to tinkering at his machine. Lady Hannah corrected her proof. When
she had done she looked at her wrist-watch. In ten minutes Supreme
Authority would descend the ladder, wield the Blue Pencil, and depart.
Would he have mercy and not sacrifice? The suspense was torturing.

Then a simple plan occurred to her by which Supreme Authority might
be--she dared not use the word "circumvented." "Got round" was even
worse; "evaded" sounded nicest. To resist the promptings of her own
feminine ingenuity required a greater storage of cold moral force than
Lady Hannah desired to possess. She took the editorial scissors, and
daintily cut off the three paragraphs from the bottom of the slip.

The thing was done, and the snipped-off paragraphs concealed, as a pair of
brown boots, with steel jack-spurs attached, came neatly down the ladder.
The Chief gave her his cheery "Good-morning," and congratulated her on
looking well. Her cheeks burned and her heart rat-tatted against the
hidden paper, as he ran his keen eye down slip after slip, and initialled
them for the press. She almost shrieked as he took up the "Social
Jottings." The underground office whirled about her as the blue pencil
steadily travelled down. Then--he was gone--and the initialled proof lay
before her. She had nothing to do but neatly and delicately paste on the
bit she had snipped off. This done, she gathered up her various small
belongings, swept