Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/138

 office, sat down and dashed off the best story he had ever written.

He had the glow of creation, and he felt reckless and brilliant. He had a good humorous story in his head—it had formed itself there automatically—and he did not let himself stop to think whether he was giving anybody unpleasant publicity or not.

Besides, he had undertaken the job, so it was his duty to his paper to carry it through to the best of his ability, no matter who was the woman's cousin, was it not?

The story began, "Mrs. H. Harrison Wells knows a ready-made shoe when she sees it. Hereafter a certain fashionable boot-maker will remember this. He has reason to." Then he referred to her dainty demonstration, and ended his opening paragraph, as was then the vogue in The Day office, with a little short sentence. Like this.

Then he made a terse exposition of the facts of the trouble, and told about Mrs. Wells's interesting shoe hobby, and described, in detail, the shoes the defence brought to court, and the shoes the serious-faced shoemaker brought also. He told