It began with her coming to Hal for his counsel about her copy.  From the first she assumed an attitude of unquestioning confidence in his wisdom and taste.  This flattered the pedagogue which is inherent in all of us.  He was wise enough to see promptly that he must be delicately careful in his criticism, since here he was dealing out not opinion, but gospel.  Poised and self-confident the girl was in her attitude toward herself:  the natural consequence of early success and responsibility.  But about her writing she exhibited an almost morbid timidity lest it be thought “vulgar” or “common” by the editor-in-chief; and once McGuire Ellis felt called upon to warn Hal that he was “taking all the gimp out of the ‘Kitty the Cutie’ stuff by trying to sewing-circularize it.”  Of literature the girl knew scarcely anything; but she had an eager ambition for better standards, and one day asked Hal to advise her in her reading.

Not without misgivings he tried her with Stevenson’s “Virginibus Puerisque” and was delighted with the swiftness and eagerness of her appreciation.  Then he introduced her by careful selection to the poets, beginning with Tennyson, through Wordsworth, to Browning, and thence to the golden-voiced singers of the sonnet, and all of it she drank in with a wistful and wondering delight.  Soon her visits came to be of almost daily occurrence.  She would dart in of an evening, to claim or return a book, and sit perched on the corner of the big work-table, like a little, flashing, friendly bird; always exquisitely neat, always vividly pretty and vividly alive.  Sometimes the talk wandered from the status of instructor and instructed, and touched upon the progress of the “Clarion,” the view which Milly’s little world took of it, possible ways of making it more interesting to the women readers to whom the “Cutie” column was supposed to cater particularly.  More than once the more personal note was touched, and the girl spoke of her coming to the Certina factory, a raw slip of a country creature tied up in calico, and of Dr. Surtaine’s kindness and watchfulness over her.

“He wanted to do well by me because of the old man—­my father, I mean,” she caught herself up, blushing.  “They knew each other when I was a kid.”

“Where?” asked Hal.

“Oh, out east of here,” she answered evasively.

Again she said to him once, “What I like about the ‘Clarion’ is that it’s trying to do something for folks.  That’s all the religion I could ever get into my head:  that human beings are mostly worth treating decently.  That counts for more than all your laws and rules and church regulations.  I don’t like rules much,” she added, twinkling up at him.  “I always want to kick ’em over, just as I always want to break through the police lines at a fire.”

“But rules and police lines are necessary for keeping life orderly,” said Hal.

“I suppose so.  But I don’t know that I like things too orderly.  My teacher called me a lawless little demon, once, and I guess I still am.  Suppose I should break all the rules of the office?  Would you fire me?” And before he could answer she was up and had flashed away.