Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/281

 pendent," said Billy, assuming the jaunty manner of the prosperous and contented. To those who knew him well it was pathetically plain that he was not content, and they were soon made to learn that he was not prosperous. Billy was as likely to forget that he had borrowed as, in his affluent days, that he had loaned.

When he signified his willingness to do general work once more, he was seized and used by another paper, and he did some big things before he left it, but it was never with the spirit with which he worked for The Day. It was an eminently respectable sheet, but Billy had little respect for it. He patronized it, thought it was sleepy, told the desk they could not appreciate a Day story, and that they took all the life and sparkle out of his copy. They called it cheap flippancy.

He threatened to resign, but did not have a chance to. He came down to the office one morning and found a notice in his letter box. Ten other men and a woman received similar notes. It was nothing unusual, just a little bi-monthly shake-up,