aw that this strange young man
from the sea not only understood her discontent, but thought it
natural, almost commonplace.

She poured it all out. "Only the worst thing," she ended, "is that I'm
not really any good. There isn't anything else that I know how to do."

"I doubt that," he answered, and she began to doubt it, too. "I'm sure
there are lots of things you could do if you put your mind on it. Did
you ever try to write?"

Now, indeed, she felt sure that he was gifted with powers more
than mortal--to have guessed this secret which no one else had ever
suspected. She colored deeply.

"Why, yes," she answered, "I think I can--a little, only I've so
little education."

"So little education?"

"Yes, I belong to the cultivated classes--three languages and nothing
solid."

"Well, you know, three languages seem pretty solid to me," said Ben,
who had wrestled very unsuccessfully with the French tongue. "You
speak three languages, and let me see, you know a good deal about
painting and poetry and jade and Chinese porcelains?"

She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. "Oh, of course everyone
knows about those things, but what good are they?"

They were a good deal of good to Ben. He pressed on toward his final
goal. "What is your attitude toward fairies?" he asked, and Miss
Cox would have heard in his tone a faint memory of his voice when he
engaged a new office-boy.

Her attitude toward fairies was perfectly satisfactory, and he showed
so much appreciation that she went on and told him her great secret
in full. She had once had something published and been paid money for
it--fifteen dollars--and probably never in her life had she spoken of
any sum with so much respect. It had been, well, a sort of a review of
a new illustrated edition of Hans Andersen's Tales, treating them as
if they were modern stories, commenting on them from the point of
view of morals and probability--making fun of people who couldn't give
themselves up to the charm of a story unless it tallied with their own
horrid little experiences of life. She told it, she said, very badly,
but perhaps he could get the idea.

He got it perfectly. "Good," he said. "I'll give you a job. I'm a
newspaper editor."

"Oh," she exclaimed, "you're not Mr. Munsey, are you, or Mr. Reid, or
Mr. Ochs?"

Her knowledge of newspaper owners seemed to come to a sudden end.

"No," he answered, smiling, "nor even Mr. Hearst. I did not say I
owned a newspaper. I