“Good for you, Billings, old man! Wait till I get a chance to tell the public what a splendid fellow you are, and what fine fellows all we reporters are any way. Perhaps we won’t be sneered at now so much as we have been.”
Thus thinking, and filled with a very pardonable pride, Myles read and re-read the story. As the train rolled into the station and he stepped from it he wondered if people would stare at him and point him out to each other. He wished he could meet some acquaintance who would call him by name; for, of course, everybody had read the account of his doings and would recognize the Myles Manning at once. How strange that people should be going about their every-day business as if it were the one thing in the world of importance, and great events, worthy of record in the newspapers, were not happening! How commonplace and trivial the things that interested them seemed to him now, in the light of what had so recently taken place!
His first plan was to go directly to the Phonograph office. No, it was too early. Nobody would be there yet. Then he thought he would go to his room, get a change of clothing, and make himself presentable. Would it not be more effective, though, to appear in the office still bearing signs of his late experience? Myles thought it would. He would first get breakfast at a restaurant and then decide what to do next.
By the way, supposing they should see the paper at home? Of course they would, or had by this time. He had subscribed for it and ordered it sent to them when he first became a reporter. What a state of mind they would be in! He ought to telegraph them at once. Acting upon this impulse he stopped at the first telegraph station and sent the following dispatch to his mother:
“Do not be anxious. Am safe. Will be out to-night.
“Myles.”
There, that would allay their anxiety, and it was neatly done in just ten words. He wrote “Will be out to-night” because it was Saturday, and he meant to spend the following day at home.
Now for breakfast. In the restaurant an intelligent-looking gentleman sat on the opposite side of his table. He had no morning paper, and Myles offered him the Phonograph, anxious to see what effect that first-column story would have upon him. The gentleman thanked him politely, took the paper, glanced carelessly through it, and returned it without comment.
“Exciting story of the strike, isn’t?” ventured Myles.