Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/115

 the first column, and Billy Woods the humorous Women's Convention story, and that Stone had built the spread-head on it.

Also, some of the younger crowd could tell which was Linton's stuff, and what kind of a story he was best at. Other cub reporters had been taken on since Linton, a great many others, and most of them had been dropped after the first month, as was usual in The Day office, which required only the best men. But most of those who remained were rapidly surpassing Linton in usefulness. Linton was not a very good reporter. He was learning to write, and he knew something about handling news, but sometimes he was not so good at getting it as he ought to have been by this time. This was put down to laziness.

It was late in the afternoon. White, the city editor, would soon be going home, and Stone, the night city editor, would take the desk. Down the room sat Linton with his feet cocked up on his table. "Mr. Linton," called the city editor.

The reporter took down his feet, picked up some copy-paper, and walked to the desk,