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IN QUEST OF A STORY
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just make-believe blind. Miss Arline, you'd have the strangest adventures if you did. I've had them; people talk to me — not the way they talk to other folks, it seems — and they tell me stories and all sorts of things. You'd have more, stranger ones still, 'cause you're older — and — and pretty!"
Arline clapped her hands and kist the child's paling cheek. "You little wizard!" she cried, ecstatically, "it's a wonderful plan — it will give me endless material — I never could have thought of it. But how shall I pretend?"
Margaret looked dubious. Her mind did not take such flights as achieved by Nell, and she looked upon the escapade darkly. "I've got an old skirt, ' ' she ventured tentatively, not wishing to appear unenthusiastic, "and a pair of black glasses."
' ' The very things. Where are they? I'll start at once, and I'll send Mr. Danis the biggest story he's ever printed!"
"Where's Barnes?" growled the city editor, emerging for a single, grimy, smoky instant from sheafs of copy.
"In th' booth," drawled the cub, laconically, with the unbearable assurance of a youngling who has but just achieved a big scoop and bears the honors weightily.
"Get 'm!"
Barnes appeared presently, flushed from the confinement of the phone booth, hat thrust well back, keen, thoroly American face, alert and tensed. The city editor glared at him a whit less contemptuously than he had at the elated cub. The city editor had never been known to glare at any one living sans the contempt. ' ' Go out 'n get a feature for the Sunday edition, Barnes," he ordered
tersely; "lots of the sob stuff — you know the sort — hustle ! ' '
Barnes wasted no words ; one never, did on the city editor — a second time. He hustled — and Chance, or Fate, or Destiny, or some other ambiguous, eternally blamed lady deity led his scurrying footsteps to the park. Barnes was not of the opinion of a certain well-known writer; he believed that there was lots of romance
ARLINE PREPARES TO BE A BLIND GIRL HERSELF
speeding along the sweepy drives in highly luxurious motors — likewise many sobs. Else Barnes would not have scurried parkward. Being an onlooker as to the motors and all pertaining thereto, Barnes did not feel that weighty sense of smugness and surety and surfeit. In fact, Barnes might have rigorously denied the defining of any such word as ' ' surfeit. ' ' And so he dropped onto a bench and scanned the passing equipages in strong hope of a sob — or at least an indication that might enable him to seize some unsuspecting notable,