Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/150

 papers. A couple of them smiled as though they thought he was pretty young to cover the story. Rufus took a seat all alone in the corner by the door and tried not to appear conscious, and when they stopped looking at him he looked at them. Donaldson had once been a foreign correspondent. The man beside him sometimes wrote editorials. They were all older than he was. Some of them had beards, some wives, and some political aspirations. At that point the Secretary of State entered.

He was smiling his public-occasion smile, looking scholarly in a frock-coat which fitted better than most public men's frock-coats, and he was followed by his stenographer, who seemed tired and had an offensive blond beard, and was to take down every word said from the moment the Secretary of State took his seat until he left the room.

The important one said, "How do you do, gentlemen?" very cordially, and began shaking hands with them all; with Carrington, too, who did not know whether or not to say he was glad to meet him.

The Secretary of State told his stenog-