“I doubt that,” he answered, and she began to doubt it, too. “I’m sure there are lots of things you could do if you put your mind on it. Did you ever try to write?” 

 Now, indeed, she felt sure that he was gifted with powers more than mortal—to have guessed this secret which no one else had ever suspected. She colored deeply. 

 “Why, yes,” she answered, “I think I can—a little, only I’ve so little education.” 

 “So little education?” 

 “Yes, I belong to the cultivated classes—three languages and nothing solid.” 

 “Well, you know, three languages seem pretty solid to me,” said Ben, who had wrestled very unsuccessfully with the French tongue. “You speak three languages, and let me see, you know a good deal about painting and poetry and jade and Chinese porcelains?” 

 She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously. “Oh, of course everyone knows about those things, but what good are they?” 

 They were a good deal of good to Ben. He pressed on toward his final goal. “What is your attitude toward fairies?” he asked, and Miss Cox would have heard in his tone a faint memory of his voice when he engaged a new office-boy. 

 Her attitude toward fairies was perfectly satisfactory, and he showed so much appreciation that she went on and told him her great secret in full. She had once had something published and been paid money for it—fifteen dollars—and probably never in her life had she spoken of any sum with so much respect. It had been, well, a sort of a review of a new illustrated edition of Hans Andersen’s Tales, treating them as if they were modern stories, commenting on them from the point of view of morals and probability—making fun of people who couldn’t give themselves up to the charm of a story unless it tallied with their own horrid little experiences of life. She told it, she said, very badly, but perhaps he could get the idea. 

 He got it perfectly. “Good,” he said. “I’ll give you a job. I’m a newspaper editor.” 

 “Oh,” she exclaimed, “you’re not Mr. Munsey, are you, or Mr. Reid, or Mr. Ochs?” 

 Her knowledge of newspaper owners seemed to come to a sudden end. 

 “No,” he answered, smiling, “nor even Mr. Hearst. I did not say I owned a newspaper. I edit it. I need some one just like you 

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