“Hello!” he greeted her.  “On Easy Street, eh?  Everything slidin’ your way.”

She smiled brightly.

“Thinks yer a female reporter, sure.  I almost split when I saw’m layin’ himself out sweet an’ pleasin’.  Honest, now, that ain’t yer graft, is it?”

“I told you my experience with editors,” she parried.  “And honest now, it was honest, too.”

But the Only Charley Welsh shook his head dubiously.  “Not that I care a rap,” he declared.  “And if you are, just gimme a couple of lines of notice, the right kind, good ad, you know.  And if yer not, why yer all right anyway.  Yer not our class, that’s straight.”

After her turn, which she did this time with the nerve of an old campaigner, the manager returned to the charge; and after saying nice things and being generally nice himself, he came to the point.

“You’ll treat us well, I hope,” he said insinuatingly.  “Do the right thing by us, and all that?”

“Oh,” she answered innocently, “you couldn’t persuade me to do another turn; I know I seemed to take and that you’d like to have me, but I really, really can’t.”

“You know what I mean,” he said, with a touch of his old bulldozing manner.

“No, I really won’t,” she persisted.  “Vaudeville’s too—­too wearing on the nerves, my nerves, at any rate.”

Whereat he looked puzzled and doubtful, and forbore to press the point further.

But on Monday morning, when she came to his office to get her pay for the two turns, it was he who puzzled her.

“You surely must have mistaken me,” he lied glibly.  “I remember saying something about paying your car fare.  We always do this, you know, but we never, never pay amateurs.  That would take the life and sparkle out of the whole thing.  No, Charley Welsh was stringing you.  He gets paid nothing for his turns.  No amateur gets paid.  The idea is ridiculous.  However, here’s fifty cents.  It will pay your sister’s car fare also.  And,”—­very suavely,—­“speaking for the Loops, permit me to thank you for the kind and successful contribution of your services.”

That afternoon, true to her promise to Max Irwin, she placed her typewritten copy into his hands.  And while he ran over it, he nodded his head from time to time, and maintained a running fire of commendatory remarks:  “Good!—­that’s it!—­that’s the stuff!—­psychology’s all right!—­the very idea!—­you’ve caught it!—­excellent!—­missed it a bit here, but it’ll go—­that’s vigorous!—­strong!—­vivid!—­pictures! pictures!—­excellent!—­most excellent!”

And when he had run down to the bottom of the last page, holding out his hand:  “My dear Miss Wyman, I congratulate you.  I must say you have exceeded my expectations, which, to say the least, were large.  You are a journalist, a natural journalist.  You’ve got the grip, and you’re sure to get on.  The Intelligencer will take it, without doubt, and take you too.  They’ll have to take you.  If they don’t, some of the other papers will get you.”