w and find
out what new task is set for me."

Mr. Magee postponed the protest on the tip of his tongue, and, climbing
the gloomy stairs that newspapers always affect, they came into the city
room of the _Star_. Though the paper had been long on the street, the
excitement of the greatest coup of years still lingered in the place.
Magee saw the deferential smiles that greeted the girl, and watched her
as she made her way to the city editor's desk. In a moment she was back
at his side.

"I've got my assignment," she smiled ruefully. They descended to the
street. "It's wonderful," she went on, "how curt a city editor can be
with any one who pulls off a good story. The job I've got now reminds me
of the experience of an old New York reporter who used to work on the
_Star_."

With difficulty they threaded their way through the crowd, and moved
along beside the green-decked windows.

"He was the first man sent out by his paper on Park Row on the Spanish
War assignment," she went on, "and he behaved rather brilliantly, I
believe. Well, he came back after the fight was over, all puffed up and
important, and they told him the city editor wanted him. 'They're going
to send me to the Philippines,' he told me he thought as he went into
the presence. When the city editor ordered him to rush down to a
two-alarm fire in Houston Street he nearly collapsed. I know how he
felt. I feel that way now."

"What was it--a one-alarm fire?" asked Magee.

"No," she replied, "a sweet little story about the Christmas toys. I've
done it to death every Christmas for--three years. Oh, well, I can do it
again. But it'll have to wait until after Mrs. Norton's lunch."

She led him into a street where every house was like its neighbor, even
to the "Rooms" sign in the windows, and up the steps of one she could
have recognized only by counting from the corner. They entered the murky
and stereotyped atmosphere of a boarding-house hallway, with its
inevitable hat-rack and the uncollected letters of the homeless on a
table. Mrs. Norton came breezily forth to meet them.

"Well, Mr. Magee," she said, "I certainly am glad you've came. I'm busy
on that lunch now. Dearie, show him into the parlor to wait."

Mr. Magee was shown in. That rooming-house parlor seemed to moan
dismally as it received him. He strolled about and gazed at the objects
of art which had at various times accrued to Mrs. Norton's personality:
a steel engraving called _Too Late_, which