Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/266

 at the same time the sudden swelling of vanity at being approached by The Press that he seldom believed even the sincere ones any more, and idly speculated on how many extra copies they would buy though you would never dream it from the way he said, "Certainly; I appreciate your situation."

Nor were these latter experiences of a sort to discourage the growth of his professional instincts—which grow according to the laws of compensation.

Billy Woods was not the only boy in the big town who was getting his eyes opened.

The young son of the lawyer who attempted to reward the reporter was also learning considerable about the less admirable side of human nature—like everyone else in the active world—and possibly he was "losing his ideals," as they sometimes sadly say. But in place of the false and pretty ideals of boyhood, he acquired, or ought to have, a grown man's wholesome conception of approximate reality. For however much of the wrong, the abnormal