"Quite an overpowering thought, is it not?" he agreed pleasantly.
"Now you see you have before you the two dictionaries you will use
most, and over in that case you will find other references. The main
thing"--his voice sank to an impressive whisper--"is _not_ to
infringe the copyright. The publisher was in yesterday and made a
little talk to the force, and he said that any one who handed in a
piece of copy infringing the copyright simply employed that means of
writing his own resignation. Neat way of putting it, was it not?"

"Yes, _wasn't_ it--neat?" she agreed, wildly.

She was conscious of a man's having stepped in behind her and taken
a seat at the table next hers. She heard him opening his dictionaries
and getting out his paper. Then the man in the skull cap had risen
and was saying genially: "Well, here is a piece of old Webster, your
first 'take'--no copyright on this, you see, but you must modernise
and expand. Don't miss any of the good words in either of these
dictionaries. Here you have dictionaries, copy-paper, paste, and
Professor Lee assures me you have brains--all the necessary
ingredients for successful lexicography. We are to have some rules
printed to-morrow, and in the meantime I trust I've made myself clear.
The main thing"--he bent down and spoke it solemnly--"is _not_ to
infringe the copyright." With a cheerful nod he was gone, and she heard
him saying to the man at the next table: "Mr. Clifford, I shall have
to ask you to be more careful about getting in promptly at eight."

She removed the cover from her paste-pot and dabbled a little on a
piece of paper. Then she tried the unwieldy shears on another piece
of paper. She then opened one of her dictionaries and read
studiously for fifteen minutes. That accomplished, she opened the