the ink-stands and on the door-knobs; a
blue band, passing around the stovepipe, imparted an antique rakishness
suggestive of the charioteer; and a number of streamers, suspended from
a hook in the ceiling, encouraged a supposition that the employees
of the "Herald" contemplated the intricate festivities of May Day. It
needed no genius to infer that these garnitures had not embellished the
editorial chamber during Mr. Harkless's activity, but, on the contrary,
had been put in place that very morning. Mr. Fisbee had not known of
the decorations, and, as his glance fell upon them, a faint look of pain
passed over his brow; but the girl examined the room with a dancing eye,
and there were both tears and laughter in her heart.

"How beautiful!" she cried. "How beautiful!" She crossed the room and
gave her hand to Ross. "It is Mr. Schofield, isn't it? The ribbons are
delightful. I didn't know Mr. Harkless's room was so pretty."

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