tion from the
editor before. It was a great and terrifying occasion.

"Sit down," he said encouragingly. He began dictating while he shook
from his bag the manuscripts he had snatched away from the amazed
English author that morning. Presently he looked up.

"Do I go too fast?"

"No, sir," Becky found strength to say.

At the end of an hour he told her to go and type as many of the
letters as she could while he went over the bunch of stuff he had
torn from the Englishman. He was with the Hindu detective in an
opium den in Shanghai when Becky returned and placed a pile of
papers on his desk.

"How many?" he asked, without looking up.

"All you gave me, sir."

"All, so soon? Wait a minute and let me see how many mistakes." He
went over the letters rapidly, signing them as he read. "They seem
to be all right. I thought you were the girl that made so many
mistakes."

Rebecca was never too frightened to vindicate herself.

"Mr. O'Mally, sir, I don't make mistakes with letters. It's only
copying the articles that have so many long words, and when the
writing isn't plain, like Mr. Gerrard's. I never make many mistakes
with Mr. Johnson's articles, or with yours I don't."

O'Mally wheeled round in his chair, looked with curiosity at her
long, tense face, her black eyes, and straight brows.

"Oh, so you sometimes copy articles, do you? How does that happen?"

"Yes, sir. Always Miss Devine gives me the articles to do. It's good
practice for me."

"I see." O'Mally shrugged his shoulders. He was thinking that he
could get a rise out of the whole American public any day easier
than he could get a rise out of Ardessa. "What editorials of mine
have you copied lately, for instance?"

Rebecca blazed out at him, reciting rapidly:

"Oh, 'A Word about the Rosenbaums,' 'Useless Navy-Yards,' 'Who
Killed Cock Robin'--"

"Wait a minute." O'Mally checked her flow. "What was that one
about--Cock Robin?"

"It was all about why the secretary of the interior dismissed--"

"All right, all right. Copy those letters, and put them down the
chute as you go out. Come in here for a minute on Monday morning."

Becky hurried home to tell her father that she had taken the
editor's letters and had made no mistakes. On Monday she learned
that she was to do O'Mally's work for a few days. He disliked Miss
Milligan, and he was annoyed with Ardessa for trying to put her over
on him when there was better material at hand. With Rebecca he go