what I stopped in to give you last night. I was going to bring it in this morning, but seeing your light as I was going home I changed my mind.”
“Oh, that was awfully good of you. Then I’ve got all I need. There isn’t anything else you can do. I can manage it all.”
“Are you sure? You’re really all right?” He was seeing the woman now, her flushed face and bright eyes set in the cloud of hair.
“Quite. You had a much worse night than I did. But now, please forget it.” She held out her hand.
He took it, raised it to his lips, kissed it twice, dropped it without looking at her, and slipped out of the door.
She stared for some seconds at the place where he had disappeared. “Well! Romantic! that man! But why am I surprised?”
Then she thought over what he had told her. And then she felt a chill upon this rather exciting event. She wondered whether he made a habit of taking morphia.
She was in the office at nine o’clock reading his leader. It was a beautiful bit of writing, so out of the common rut of such work that it was copied in full afterwards by a number of papers with comments on the inspired moment that had fallen upon the editor of the News. Then she read the account of the Englishman and his windfall. It was excellent journalism. She would not cut a word of it. She labelled both and took them in to the foreman.
Later in the Hay Ryder looked at her curiously. He alone of the staff had noticed that she was not quite herself.
“Bully stuff, that leader, Miss Carr,” he said.
“Yes, isn’t it? Mr. Barrington gave it to me last night with the other copy.”
