Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/253

 there was nothing to explain, and his stories were becoming the talk of Printing House Square, and they told him he had a great career before him, and Billy said, "Really, do you think so?" smiling delightedly, "Isn't that fine!"

Thus the bond attaching him to the uptown organism became more and more stretched as time and his success as a newspaper-reporter went on. He soon became too valuable for the city editor to spare of ten, and even when an engagement was made it sometimes had to be broken, which hostesses quite naturally failed to understand. And when Billy's one "day off" in seven came around it seemed such a waste of time to spend it upon stupid conventional people who did not know what was going on in the world, and took so long to think that it made him nervous. The Southern cotillions were no longer simple and Southern, for the committee were trying to put on New York lugs, said Billy, who thought this absurd. … Until finally the cord was snapped entirely, in this way: He went up to dine with some old friends