Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/199

 in and out with messages and copy. In the pitiless glare of the electric light the faces round her looked worn and haggard. She sent her story to the night city editor's desk, and leaning back in her chair in the moment of relaxation after a mental strain, sympathized with herself and her fellow-workers with the intensity of overtired nerves. Was it all worth while? she asked herself wearily, as she had asked many times before. She thought of the home down South, which she had left so hopefully three years ago to seek her fortune. As she closed her eyes she could see every feature of the old house nestled so cosily in its setting of blossoming shrubs. Again she heard the sighing of the night wind among the pines and the sleepy call of birds to one another. She could almost smell the perfume of the roses that climbed over the verandas and looked in at the windows of her own little room. In fancy she saw that room, its walls covered with the pictures she loved, the dwarf book case filled with her favorite books, the desk at which she had written her first ambitious "literary" efforts, the small white bed where