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“Oh, take your scoop!” half groaned young Anthony Fox.

Sally began to laugh, but it was curiously shaken laughter. Mr. Billings wisely seized this moment for a rapid departure. Mr. Fox, coming to the door a moment later, found the others silent on the steps.

“Now we are in for it!” said Sally, ruefully, as they made room for him between them. “What shall we do? Jerry’s got it for the Call–we couldn’t LIE about it! And, oh, we CAN’T have it in print to-morrow! Can you–can’t you stop it?”

“Too late now!” said young Anthony, with a bad attempt at unconcern.

“Tell me what happened,” said his father.

The recent developments were rapidly reviewed, and then Sally, removing herself and her wide-spreading ruffles to young Anthony’s side of the steps, so that she might from time to time give his hand an affectionate and enlightening squeeze, confessed the deception of her engagement to him, and, with her blue eyes very close to his, asked him meekly to forgive her.

Young Anthony’s forgiveness was a compound of boyish hurt and undisguised relief. It is probable that at no moment of their friendship had she seemed more dear to him.

“But–there’s Jerry!” said Sally, suddenly, smitten with unpleasant recollection in the midst of this harmonious readjustment. “He–he heard, you know. And we can’t deny THAT, and it means so much to him! He’ll have telephoned up to town by this time, and the Call will run it anyway–newspaper editors are such beasts about those things!”

And again she and young Anthony drooped, and clung to each other’s hands.

“I have been thinking,” said the other Anthony, slowly, “that I see a way out of this. I HOPE I see one! I’d like–I’d like to discuss it with Miss Sally. If you’ll just step down to the–the chicken yard, Bud, for five minutes, say. We’ll call you. And it’s just possible that we can–can arrange matters.”

Half an hour later, Jerry Billings succeeded a second time in getting the city editor of the Call on the long-distance wire.

“Hello, Mr. Watts! Say, about that engagement of young Fox, Mr. Watts,” he began.

“Well, what’s the matter with it?” came back the editor’s voice, sharply.

“Nothing’s the matter with it,” said Jerry, “only it’s better than I thought! It’s–it’s old Fox that Miss Mix is going to marry! Old A.F. himself!”

“Who said so?” snapped the other.

“Fox did.”

“FOX?”

“Yes, sir. He just telephoned to me. Gave me the whole thing. Said he wanted it to be published straight.”

There was a pregnant silence for a few moments, then:

“This is no jolly, Billings? It’s big stuff if it’s true, you know.”

“Oh, it’s true enough,” said Jerry, trying to control his voice.

“Well, we’ve got his picture–I’m sure!” said Mr. Watts, calmly. Then in obedience to Mr. Watts’ curt “Hold the wire!” Jerry, with the receiver pressed to his ear, heard the city editor’s voice on another telephone on his desk talking presumably to the make-up man on the next floor.

“Hello, Frank!” said Watts. “Tell Mike Williams to run that suffragette stuff on the third page. I’ve got a big story. I want room for a double cut and a column on the front!”

Then: “Hello, Billings! You telephone me six hundred words on this thing inside of an hour. No frills you understand. Just give me the straight facts. We’ll fix the yarn up here.”