He flicked over the first leaf, and pointed dramatically to the page disclosed.
"Snippets generally—some American, and some dodged up out of old chestnuts with a new flavour. But"—he held up a forefinger, and winked—"but, I say, doesn't the young man who buys us repeat them over to his friends, and his mother (if the old lady'll stand 'em!), and his girl, and a few others. Page two: a small story, sir, cut straight out of the heart of the Latin Quarter—with a real grisette, and an artist who is going into the Salon in five minutes—and a hopeless love story. Picture in the middle of the grisette—dodged up from a photograph, with the hair altered. About nine hundred words—and I paid eleven and sixpence for it. He's a beginner; but he'll do well presently. And that isn't his right name."
"It seems very short," Jimmy ventured to say.
"They've got to be short; I cut twenty lines out of this myself; he'd worked in something about his mother's grave, which wasn't in the picture a bit. Page three: picture of two girls and a man—dodged-up joke underneath. Page four: the beginning of our Grand New Serial Story—which you may begin any week by reading the synopsis at the top; I do the synopsis myself, and the ungrateful beast of an author complains bitterly. That takes up—the serial, I mean—three pages and a bit. More pictures; Continental cuttings—we have to tone them down a bit, but we get 'em very cheap—then a competition which takes up a page, and for which the prizes are small; then our Beginners' Page; which means that they send us stories, and we cut 'em down a bit, and send 'em a nicey-picey letter, saying they'll do better by and by, and will they please let us hear from 'em again. That's rather a cheap page," he added, contemplatively. "Then we finish up with a couple of novelettes in a nutshell; about six hundred words each—must be full of plot; then answers to correspondents—chiefly love and complexion stuff; and there you are! That's what we call editing," he added, proudly. "You can take that home if you like, and have a good look at it."
"I quite see that any story as long as mine wouldn't suit," said Jimmy, a little mystified. "I ought to have sent it somewhere else." He half rose from his seat.
"Stop a bit," said the young man, taking up the manuscript, and looking through it with his lips pursed. "Stop a bit." He tossed the thing over on to the other desk, and called to the boy: "William—what should you say was the length?"
William cast an eye over it—the eye of the expert who was not to be deceived, turned to the last page, seemed almost to weigh it in his hand, and then replied.
"Fifteen five hundred—might be a little over," he said, handing it back, and resuming his work as though this were a matter of the smallest interest.
"There you are, you see," exclaimed the editor with a triumphant smile. "No good at all. But I'll tell you what I think—and I wouldn't tell everybody. It's got an idea in it; and I can assure you we often get double the quantity, without any idea at all. Now, I wonder if you're prepared to listen to reason?"
Jimmy indicating that he was prepared to listen to anything, the young man made one or two suggestions. In the first place, he was to take it away, and read it over; he was to take out the idea that was in it, and to boil it down—that was the actual expression used—to something like two thousand words. He was to leave in as much love as possible. "They'll stand any amount of that sort of thing," said the young man; and he was also to leave in all the sensation. If he came across a tree he was simply to say it was a tree, and not attempt to describe it; nor was he to let himself go on scenery at all. And if he did all that satisfactorily, and didn't spoil the idea, he would have a guinea. "We pay on Fridays," said the young man easily, as though that was the most ordinary part of the business.