"I suppose you run away with the idea that you're a genius—eh?" Jimmy shook his head and blushed at the mere suggestion, although he had a sneaking feeling that that suggestion might not be so very wrong after all. "Because, if you've got that sort of idea, you're not much good to us. You may be able to write some day; there are indications of it; but you've got a lot to learn. How long's your story?"
He took up the precious manuscript from beside him, and carelessly turned over the leaves. Jimmy had not thought of that vital point; he said he wasn't quite sure.
"You're like all the rest, my boy," retorted the young man, throwing the packet on his desk. "You write a story to please yourself—and you ramble on, and you fill it with accounts of green trees, and waving grass, and birds, and God knows what; things that everybody knows about, and don't want to read about; and you send us—say twenty thousand words—when we run to anything from five hundred to three thousand. Bless you, you wouldn't look at the paper—would you, now?"
Jimmy murmured that he had seen the paper—well, everywhere; and the young man grinned.
"That's our circulation; you couldn't help seeing it," he said. "But what do you think would happen to us if we printed that"—he indicated Jimmy's manuscript, without even glancing at it—"and shoved about five pages of it down their throats, just to see what they would swallow? What would be the result? I'll tell you."
He threw one leg over the arm of the chair, and struck a match; forgot to apply it to the pipe, and blew it out, and dropped it into his waste-paper basket. Jimmy watched him reverently.
"We should first of all be deluged with letters from all the smart young men who read us, and snigger at us, and like us; and they'd want to know what the something something we'd printed it for, or where we found it; and they'd offer to do something a great deal better, just to show us what the public wanted. William," he looked across at the boy at the other desk—"give me a copy of the last for Mr. Larrance—will you?"
The boy stretched out an arm, without looking up, and handed the man a copy of the paper; the editor, after flicking over the leaves complaisantly, passed it on to Jimmy. "Just look at that," he said.
Jimmy looked at the thing a little helplessly—turning over the pages mechanically; then he handed it back to the young man. "I see," he murmured.
"No, you don't; you only think you do," retorted the other, not unkindly. "My boy—we ain't out for literature, because we've got a living to make; but we do the thing honestly, and we work pretty hard. Observe, please."