Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/118

 Linton had taken the clipping, and the first words he saw made him feel as if he had been caught doing something he was ashamed of. "Mrs. H. Harrison Wells's shoes," was the head. Everyone knew who Mrs. H. Harrison Wells was, but she happened to be one of the few people in all New York Linton knew personally. That was bad enough in itself, but that was not the worst. She was a first cousin to the girl uptown who stood for everything that newspaper work was not. For a moment he recoiled. He did not like to think of coming, in his newspaper capacity, in contact with anybody or anything even remotely connected with her. So he was asking himself if he could deliberately go to work and make a relative of hers the subject of "an article in the newspaper" for people to talk and gossip about?

"What's the matter," asked White; "don't you want it?"

Linton hesitated.

"Oh, here," interposed the city editor, impatiently; "if you've made some other plan for your day off, say so, and I'll give it to someone else."