ll her
everything. Then it would be over and done with. She would not worry
then as she would if he told her some impossible story.

She was in her chair in the living room when he returned home. He threw
himself at her feet.

"Mother," he said, "please."

"My boy," she said, waiting for him to lift his face from her lap.

He felt he could not raise his head. They sat silent for a while and
then she put her hands on each side of his head and lifted his face to
hers. He shut his eyes. He could not stand to see her look as she saw
his condition.

He waited, his battered face upturned. It seemed hours that she held his
face, without a word. Then she leaned forward and her lips touched his
forehead gently in a kiss.

"My boy," she said and her arms went around his neck.

They rose at last and she bathed his wounds, smiling through her tears.
When he kissed her goodnight she whispered again, "My boy." He knew he
was forgiven and he went to his room thinking of the adventure waiting
for him in the morning when he would meet Morton and begin work in a
newspaper office.

* * * * *

He was bewildered when he entered the editorial department of the
afternoon newspaper of which Morton was sporting editor. Never had he
seen such a busy place.

Telegraph instruments and typewriters clicked and clattered incessantly.
Although it was broad day outside, electric lights burned brightly over
desks. The floor was covered with discarded newspapers and scraps and
balls of copy paper.

Men and boys hurried from desk to desk, back and forth, in and out of
swinging doors. As he watched them, wondering if they really knew what
they were doing themselves, they reminded him of ants around an ant
hill. He was thrilled by the life and energy of the place, the speed and
earnestness of the workers.

At a flat-topped desk over which was a sign with the words "City Editor"
sat a fat, bald-headed man wearing a green eye-shade, who spoke over
his shoulder to a younger man at another desk close to his. This younger
man wore a telephone headgear, receivers over both ears, and punched at
the typewriter before him with the first finger of each hand. John saw
he was writing what someone was dictating to him over the telephone.

"T, like in Thomas; I like in Isaac; P like in Peter," the man with the
headgear shouted into the mouthpiece of an extension close to his face.

John tried to fathom what the man with th