Spring Street | Page 7

him.
When he transferred at Seventh and Spring streets and boarded another
car a woman gasped at the sight of his face. Murphy had used every
trick known to a professional second to doctor his battered features, but
nothing could hide the swollen lips, the cut over his eye and the eye
that was puffed so that there was only a thin slit between the lids to see
through.
He decided that it would be easier upon his mother for him to tell her
everything. Then it would be over and done with. She would not worry
then as she would if he told her some impossible story.
She was in her chair in the living room when he returned home. He
threw himself at her feet.
"Mother," he said, "please."
"My boy," she said, waiting for him to lift his face from her lap.
He felt he could not raise his head. They sat silent for a while and then
she put her hands on each side of his head and lifted his face to hers. He
shut his eyes. He could not stand to see her look as she saw his
condition.
He waited, his battered face upturned. It seemed hours that she held his
face, without a word. Then she leaned forward and her lips touched his
forehead gently in a kiss.

"My boy," she said and her arms went around his neck.
They rose at last and she bathed his wounds, smiling through her tears.
When he kissed her goodnight she whispered again, "My boy." He
knew he was forgiven and he went to his room thinking of the
adventure waiting for him in the morning when he would meet Morton
and begin work in a newspaper office.
* * * * *
He was bewildered when he entered the editorial department of the
afternoon newspaper of which Morton was sporting editor. Never had
he seen such a busy place.
Telegraph instruments and typewriters clicked and clattered incessantly.
Although it was broad day outside, electric lights burned brightly over
desks. The floor was covered with discarded newspapers and scraps
and balls of copy paper.
Men and boys hurried from desk to desk, back and forth, in and out of
swinging doors. As he watched them, wondering if they really knew
what they were doing themselves, they reminded him of ants around an
ant hill. He was thrilled by the life and energy of the place, the speed
and earnestness of the workers.
At a flat-topped desk over which was a sign with the words "City
Editor" sat a fat, bald-headed man wearing a green eye-shade, who
spoke over his shoulder to a younger man at another desk close to his.
This younger man wore a telephone headgear, receivers over both ears,
and punched at the typewriter before him with the first finger of each
hand. John saw he was writing what someone was dictating to him over
the telephone.
"T, like in Thomas; I like in Isaac; P like in Peter," the man with the
headgear shouted into the mouthpiece of an extension close to his face.
John tried to fathom what the man with the headgear was talking about
and it finally dawned on him that he was making certain of the spelling

of the word "tip," dictated to him, by repeating the letters as they
appeared in other words.
He caught sight of Morton at a desk on the far side of the big,
high-ceilinged room and crossed over, weaving his way through a
labyrinth of desks, chairs and tables. Morton, who had been glancing
over a newspaper, looked up as he approached.
"Well, if it isn't the Gallant kid!" he exclaimed. "I'd almost forgotten all
about you. Sit down."
John sat down while Morton questioned him. No, he had never done
any writing except a little for his school paper. Yes, he'd like to start in
as a reporter. It didn't make much difference how much he was paid as
long as he could get started.
"All right, then," said Morton, rising. "We'll go over and see P. Q., but
don't you ever blame him for getting you started in this game."
The sporting editor led him to the fat, bald-headed man with the green
eye-shade.
"P. Q.," he said.
The city editor looked up.
"Here's the young fellow I was telling you about this morning; name's
John Gallant."
"P. Q."--John afterward learned that those were his initials, uniquely
symbolical of his perpetual order to reporters to be "pretty quick" in
their work--looked at the marks on John's face left by the fists of
Battling Rodriguez.
"Fighting face, all right," he said. "Well, suppose you go to work."
He reached back to his desk and brought up a handful of clippings from
a newspaper from