act--was open to him, and, alert as ever, he was
seizing the opportunity.

"It's a chance--a good chance--to go into the newspaper game as my own
boss, or as part proprietor anyhow," he explained. "Mr. Orcutt is
making the _Star_ into a daily, and he wants a live man--a young
man--to take charge of it. Father's let me have a couple of thousand
dollars, and I've borrowed three thousand more, and I'm going in with
Mr. Orcutt as a partner. It's a big thing for me if I can pull it
through. And I _will_ pull it through. I was editor of our college
magazine, and I've worked on one or another of the Louisville papers
every summer, so I know a little about the game--and I like it
tremendously. Oh, I'll succeed all right!"

"Of course you will!" she agreed heartily. At the mere sound of his
bright, confident voice she believed in his ability to succeed in
anything whatever.

"Yes, of course I will. And it's nice to have _you_ say so. The only
question about it," he pursued, "is whether it's a big _enough_
opportunity for me. But I'll _make_ it big enough. I'll make the
paper grow--and the paper will make the town grow. See? All
Shadyville needs is enterprise--enterprise and advertising."

"Yes," she agreed again. An hour earlier she would have been ready to
protect Shadyville's sacred precincts from the vandals of "enterprise"
and "advertising" with her own slim fist, but here she was handing over
the keys of the town to modern commercialism without a qualm of
hesitation. "_You're_ just what Shadyville needs, Ted," she added
earnestly.

"I thought you'd feel that way about it!" And his voice was exultant.
"You always were a good pal, Sheila!"

And at the tribute Sheila had a swift conception of woman's mission as
the perfect comrade. Oh, that was a mission to thrill and inspire one,
to move one to high and selfless endeavor! And she dedicated herself,
in the secrecy of her own mind, to the cause of Ted and the _Shadyville
Star_.

Throughout the next few weeks she was, indeed, the perfect comrade.
She who had never before been interested in the spectacle of actual,
contemporary life, flung herself now, with a fervor which not even her
personal ambitions had excited, into the business of life's presentment
through the daily press, and in particular through the medium of the
_Shadyville Star_. She read newspapers avidly; she suggested subjects
for editorials to Ted; she came down to the office of the _Sh