Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/194

 the men considered all these acts as merely conscience-salve. Indeed, he some times thought so, himself, and felt quite ashamed about it—after the paper went to press.

But after the paper went to press he had little or nothing to do with the other men in the office. The editors of the other departments all had their intimate friends, and none of them was jovial and familiar with him. They did not say, "Hurry up and put on your coat, I'll wait for you down-stairs," to him; they treated him with a great deal of polite respect, and said "Good-morning, Maguire," and "Good-night, Maguire," and but little else. Maguire did not know how to make advances himself. He did not know how to do anything except get out a rattling good newspaper, and he lived all alone, now that his wife was dead, and the paper was all he had to care about. Perhaps that was the reason he cared for it so much.

He looked around at the men. But as he looked around, two of the reporters at a near-by table suddenly stopped talking. One of them looked up at the ceiling; the other