Patience slept little that night. Her head ached violently. When she presented herself at the office Steele sent her to report a morning lecture. It was dull, and she fell asleep. When she returned to the office Steele happened to be alone.

“I have no report,” she said. “I fell asleep. That is all I have to say.”

For a few seconds he stared at her, then turned on his heel. In a moment he came back. “The next time you do that,” he said, “hunt up the reporter of some other newspaper and get points from him. First-class reporters always stand in together. Here’s a good story badly written that has come up from Honduras. Take it home and revamp it, and let me have it to-morrow.”

“You are awfully good. I thought you would tell me to go, and I certainly deserve to.”

“You certainly do, but we won’t discuss the matter further.”

That was an unhappy week for Patience, and she lost faith in her star. A great foreign actress, whom she was sent to interview, haughtily refused to be seen, and the next morning capriciously sent for a reporter of the “Eye,” the hated rival of the “Day.” She was put on the trail of a fashionable scandal and failed to gather any facts. She was sent to interview a strange old woman, supposed to have a history, who lived on a canal boat, and became so interested in the creature that she forgot all about the “Day,” and did not appear at Mr. Steele’s desk for three days. When she did he looked sternly at her guilty face, although the corners of his mouth twitched.

“I’m delighted to see you have not forsaken us,” he said sarcastically. “May I ask if the canal boat woman quite slipped your memory?”

“N-o-o. I have been there ever since.”

“Indeed?” His ears visibly twitched. “That alters the case. Did you get the story out of her?”

Patience looked at him steadily for a moment, then dropped her eyes.

“There is nothing to tell,” she answered.

Steele sprang to his feet.

“Come out here,” he said. He led her into a corner of the composing-room, and they sat down on a bench.

“Now tell me,” he said peremptorily. “What have you heard? You have news in your eye. I see it.”

“I have nothing to tell.”

“Suppose you tell the truth. You have the story, and you won’t give it up. Why not?”

“Well—you see—she confided in me—she said I was the only woman who had given her a decent word in twenty years; and if I told the story she would be in jail to-morrow night. Do you think I’d be so low as to tell it?”

“Sentimentality, my dear young woman, is fatal to a newspaper reporter. Suppose the entire staff should go silly; where would the ‘Day’ be?”

“It might possibly be a good deal more admirable than it is now.”

“We won’t go into a discussion of theory v. practice. I want that story.”

“You won’t get it.”

“Indeed.” He looked at her with cold angry eyes. “The trouble is that you have not been made to feel what the discipline of a newspaper office is—”

Patience leaned forward and smiled up audaciously into his face. “You would do exactly the same thing yourself,” she said; “so don’t scold any more. I admit that you frighten me half to death, but all the same I know that you would never send a poor old woman to prison—not to be made editor-in-chief.”

He reddened, and looked anything but pleased at the compliment. “Do you know that you have just said that I am a jay newspaper man?” he asked.

But Patience only continued to smile, and in a moment he smiled back at her, then, with an impatient exclamation, left her and returned to his desk.