"Oh, damn! Take those proofs to Blackie!" roared the
managing editor. And thus ended Blackie's enforced
flight into the realms of dignity.

All these things, and more, I wrote to the
scandalized Norah. I informed her that he wore more
diamond rings and scarf pins and watch fobs than a
railroad conductor, and that his checked top-coat
shrieked to Heaven.

There came back a letter in which every third word
was underlined, and which ended by asking what the morals
of such a man could be.

Then I tried to make Blackie more real to Norah who,
in all her sheltered life, had never come in contact with
a man like this.

" . . . As for his morals--or what you would consider
his morals, Sis--they probably are a deep crimson; but
I'll swear there is no yellow streak. I never have heard
anything more pathetic than his story. Blackie sold
papers on a down-town corner when he was a baby six years
old. Then he got a job as office boy here, and he used
to sharpen pencils, and run errands, and carry copy.
After office hours he took care of some horses in an
alley barn near by, and after that work was done he was
employed about the pressroom of one of the old German
newspaper offices. Sometimes he would be too weary to