She would not mind his mocking.  “That day you spoke about ’The Maiden Knight’, don’t you know, I had never heard any talk about books in that way.  I didn’t know you were an author then.”

“Well, I’m not much of an author now,” he said, cynically, to retrieve his folly in repeating his poem to her.

“Oh, that will do for you to say.  But I know what Mrs. March thinks.”

He wished very much to know what Mrs. March thought, too; ’Every Other Week’ was such a very good place that he could not conscientiously neglect any means of having his work favorably considered there; if Mrs. March’s interest in it would act upon her husband, ought not he to know just how much she thought of him as a writer?  “Did she like the poem.”

Miss Triscoe could not recall that Mrs. March had said anything about the poem, but she launched herself upon the general current of Mrs. March’s liking for Burnamy.  “But it wouldn’t do to tell you all she said!” This was not what he hoped, but he was richly content when she returned to his personal history.  “And you didn’t know any one when, you went up to Chicago from—­”

“Tippecanoe?  Not exactly that.  I wasn’t acquainted with any one in the office, but they had printed somethings of mine, and they were willing to let me try my hand.  That was all I could ask.”

“Of course!  You knew you could do the rest.  Well, it is like a romance.  A woman couldn’t have such an adventure as that!” sighed the girl.

“But women do!” Burnamy retorted.  “There is a girl writing on the paper now—­she’s going to do the literary notices while I’m gone—­who came to Chicago from Ann Arbor, with no more chance than I had, and who’s made her way single-handed from interviewing up.”

“Oh,” said Miss Triscoe, with a distinct drop in her enthusiasm.  “Is she nice?”

“She’s mighty clever, and she’s nice enough, too, though the kind of journalism that women do isn’t the most dignified.  And she’s one of the best girls I know, with lots of sense.”

“It must be very interesting,” said Miss Triscoe, with little interest in the way she said it.  “I suppose you’re quite a little community by yourselves.”

“On the paper?”

“Yes.”

“Well, some of us know one another, in the office, but most of us don’t.  There’s quite a regiment of people on a big paper.  If you’d like to come out,” Burnamy ventured, “perhaps you could get the Woman’s Page to do.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, fashion; and personal gossip about society leaders; and recipes for dishes and diseases; and correspondence on points of etiquette.”

He expected her to shudder at the notion, but she merely asked, “Do women write it?”

He laughed reminiscently.  “Well, not always.  We had one man who used to do it beautifully—­when he was sober.  The department hasn’t had any permanent head since.”

He was sorry he had said this, but it did not seem to shock her, and no doubt she had not taken it in fully.  She abruptly left the subject.  “Do you know what time we really get in to-morrow?”