dark caverns.

"Why, I only thought they wouldn't be back in their offices from
luncheon," explained the English girl.

"When you know a little more about N'York," replied Miss Hampshire,
whose manner was involuntarily less mellow when she had hooked a fish,
"you'll see why it could never be run as it is along _those_ lines.
Many of our most prominent business men consider a piece of pie with a
tumbler of milk a good and sufficient lunch, and it takes them five
minutes to swallow it."

Primed with this information and intricate instructions concerning
street cars (a child once burned dreads a taxi), Winifred started out
soon after her own midday meal, eaten in a basement dining-room.

She went first to see the editor; for somehow newspaper reporting
seemed more congenial to the vivid New York climate than singing in a
church choir, and the hugeness of the _To-day and To-morrow_ building
turned her again into a worm. It did not so much scrape the sky as
soar into it, and when she timidly murmured the words "editorial
offices" she was shot up to the top in an elevator as in a
perpendicularly directed catapult.

When the fearsome thing stopped she had the sensation that her head
alone had arrived, the rest had been shed on the way, but in a large
open space furnished with roll-top desks and typewriters and men and
girls she was looked at as though nothing unusual had happened.

"A letter of introduction for Mr. Burritt?" repeated a young man with
a whimsical expression. "I'm afraid you'll have to go higher up to
deliver it."

"I thought I'd got to the top," said Win. "Or"--and she tried to catch
the office note of sprightliness--"does he inhabit a roof garden?"

The young man smiled. "He used to be fond of them after office hours.
But not being a spiritualist, I haven't heard from him concerning his
present habits."

"He is--dead?"

"That's about it," said the young man. "A year ago. But he was only
our city editor, so maybe he didn't get a black border in your English
papers."

Miss Child did not ask how one knew that she was English. She
recovered herself, thought of taking leave, and then decided not to be
precipitate. Instead, she inquired if she could see any other editor.

"Which other have you got a letter to?" the young man temporized.

"None. But---"

"Then I'm afraid it's no use without an appointment. Anyhow, this
isn't the right hour to snapshot editors of daily papers. They're
night-bloomi