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AND yet it seemed that Rose-Ann knew him better than he knew himself.
On Monday morning the city editor gruffly assigned him a desk. He hated to sit there idle, and he had thrown away his morning paper. Finding that he still had Rose-Ann’s little book in his pocket, he took it out and read in that. Presently the city editor called his name. He rose, putting the book back into his pocket. His first test had come.
“Go over to the Annex and see if you can get something about the Taft-Roosevelt situation from—” and he named a distinguished political personage.
“Where?” Felix asked.
“At the Annex.”
(But what in the world was the Annex? From the tone in which its name had been uttered by the city editor, Felix was aware that it was some place that he ought to know all about. Some place that anybody who had ever dreamed of being a reporter on a Chicago paper would of course know all about! But what was it? The Annex to what?... By a violent mental effort he came to the conclusion that it must be a hotel; probably one of Chicago’s most famous hotels! and here he had been in Chicago a month, and didn’t know where it was. Idiot!)
“Yes, sir,” said Felix to the city editor, and went out and asked the policeman on the nearest corner.... It was horribly obvious to him, at that moment, that he was too ignorant of plain everyday reality ever to hold this job.