Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the city room.djvu/235

 with generous enthusiasm. "One of the best things of the kind I ever read. I might have known she had it in her. That quiet, shrinking type of woman always has."

"What a stunning bluff she put up on us!" laughed another man. "She took us all in—every one of us—with her convent manner and her nursery eyes. I thought she was fresh from vernal fields, but I guess she knows a few things." Matthews, listening to it all, wondered if he were becoming the victim of homicidal mania, since there seemed no other explanation for his feverish longing for the gore of these friends of his.

"Let's make her feel at home when she drops in," suggested the bright young woman who did sensational stories for the "Evening Globe." She wore blonde hair and much red paint, and she had always resented keenly the deep respect shown by the staff to Miss Van Dyke. The Tenderloin story was one she would have been glad to write if she had thought of it. Not having done so, she was pleased by the sentiment concerning Miss Van Dyke which that young person's story had called forth so freely.