Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/82

 the Row, and it is an old one. It is of another reporter I am to tell.

This, too, is old, but it has not been told before, perhaps because it is not a story. But I believe the reason is that those who know it best do not care to tell about it.

My cub reporter was pacing up and down before a comfortable-looking house on the avenue, trying to make his legs take him up the steps, and they would not do it.

He had been told to find out what a well-known New York family had to say about its son's ejection from a music-hall the night before for tossing hats and slippers at a variety actress on the stage from a box where he sat with his arm around another actress. The new reporter had been walking up and down before the house for ten minutes.

At last, looking in both directions to make sure no one he knew was near, he took a long breath, dashed up the steps and rang the bell.

"Is Colonel Richardson at home?"

"No sir," said the servant.

"Is—is Mrs. Richardson at home?"