I reached the top landing again, three steps at a time; but the voice that
said "Come!" was not Helen's and the figure that turned from pulling at
the shades was short and rolypoly and crowned by flaming red hair.

"Miss Winship?" said the voice, as its owner seated herself at a big
table. "Can't imagine what's, keeping her. Are you the John Burke I've
heard so much about? And--perhaps Helen has written to you of Kitty Reid?"

Without waiting for a reply, she bent over the table, scratching with a
knife at a sheet of bold drawings of bears.

"You won't mind my keeping right on?" she queried briskly, lifting a rosy,
freckled face. "This is the animal page of the Sunday _Star_ and
Cadge is in a hurry for it, to do the obbligato."

I suppose I must have looked the puzzlement I felt, for she added
hastily:--

"The text, you know; a little cool rill of it to trickle down through the
page like a fine, thin strain of music that--that helps out the song--tee-
e-e-um; tee-e-e-um--" She lifted her arm, sawing with a long ruler at a
violin of air,--"but you don't have to listen unless you wish--to the
obbligato, you know."

"Doesn't the writer think the pictures the unobtrusive embroidery of the
violin, and the writing the magic melody one cannot choose but hear?"

I thought that rather neat for my first day in New York, but the shrewd
blue eyes opened wide at the heresy.