THE city editor wanted a story with "human interest" in it, so he looked around for the Little Reporter.

       She came whirling in on the wings of the revolving door, dancing on her toes to keep up a circulation, her fingers wiggling within her muff, her veil dotted with frozen tear drops.

       "My! It's cold!" she piped, "and so glassy, I slipped twice getting here from the elevated."

       Throwing her frosted muff and coat on her roll-top desk she lovingly hugged the radiator, holding in her half-numbed fingers the morning paper, while she scanned the headlines.

       They called her "the Little Reporter" because she was no bigger than your thumb and because she belonged to that particular type of woman which always appeals to the male heart as needing to be taken care of.

       "Yes," said the city editor, "it is cold, and the weather has made me think of a story for you. New York must be full of suffering of one kind and another on a day like this. Just go out and spend it looking for the coldest woman in New York, or the saddest woman, or the most overworked woman, or the most anything woman in New York, and come back and write a story about her."

       So the Little Reporter drew on her coat and dried her veil and wrapped it about her face, and skipped blithely out by the circling door into the sleet, and late that night she came back and sat at her desk and wrote a story, and she called it

"THE WOMAN WHO WAS SO TIRED."

       While the city editor read the copy it was noticed that he used his handkerchief freely, while swearing at whoever it might be who insisted upon having fresh air from an open window.

       "And me coming down with this cold in my head!" muttered the city editor unsteadily.

☙      ☙      ☙

       The story of "The Woman Who Was So Tired" made a hit. It was full of a gay humor and a tender pathos that touched the heart. In it the Little Reporter seemed to have given her readers of her best, that best which made the smile break through the tears like a sunburst through an April shower. People read, and as they read they laughed with "The Woman Who Was So Tired" at the comedies in her daily life, while as quickly they wept over her tragedies.

       "The Woman Who Was So Tired" was described as young and self-supporting, and others-supporting as well, for she had a mother who stopped at home and kept the Harlem flat between the intervals of pain; two little sisters in the public school and a young brother.

       To earn their several livings "The Woman Who Was So Tired" had chosen a profession which made of her a wanderer in New York's streets, among the rich, the poor, the moderately well-to-do. Did not one know without a telling that she was a book canvasser or a seller of small wares at open doors — doors that so often shut in her face ere she had stated her errand?

       All day she wandered among downtown offices, east side tenements, west side apartments. Sometimes into shops on Fifth Avenue and Broadway, sometimes into those of humble, dirty side streets; sometimes she searched for treasure among the refuse cans. There were days when, in connection with her own legitimate business, she would attempt to aid those who were in greater distress than herself, and on certain of these days there were high-pitched voices that assailed her and brooms held in filthy hands would almost sweep her down a squalid five flights of stairs. The longer she worked the better she was likely to be paid, for she worked on a pitiful commission.

       Often when in the worst neighborhoods of the east side she would go hungry all the day, not always because she lacked the pennies for food, but because her capricious appetite revolted against the fare served in any of the nearby restaurants.

       She was ever running to catch cars and trains, for minutes were precious to her, or she would go walking seeking out her patrons, and so she was always weary.

       At the newspaper office they knew at once the story had made a hit, because it brought in letters by the dozens. Kind-hearted philanthropists demanded to be given the real name and address of "The Woman Who Was So Tired," for they knew she lived and moved among them every day and that the author of the story had met her and known her well. She had gone to their hearts and they wanted to do something for her. One saw that the weary woman was proud, though poor, so the philanthropists declared they would help her without her knowing whence help came. Working women wrote, thanking the author for her championship of women who had to work overtime, for the heroine had been described as often working sixteen hours a day.

       Before the end of the week the volume of correspondence concerning the story and its heroine so increased that now the Little Reporter had it heaped upon her desk in stacks, and presents began to arrive addressed to "The Woman Who Was So Tired" in care of the editor or the writer of the story. Checks came in, and the Little Reporter scratched the palm of her hand with pins that fastened dollar bills to note paper on which was daintily written or ignorantly scrawled a word of sympathy for the heroine of roving feet.

       There were presents of warm clothing, dress lengths, toys of various kinds for the little sisters and brother, a thin Coalport cup and saucer for the invalid mother who in the story longed for the dainty surroundings of better days; there were books, some grave, some laughter-giving, all nicely bound; boxes of chocolates, packages of nuts.

       Very frequently the city editor would be called to the telephone to be asked for the address or further information of "The Woman Who Was So Tired," and he grew irritable over the continual interruptions to his work. "One might think," he said crossly, "that nobody ever was tired before and never would be again. Great Scott! I'm tired myself. Here!" he called to Bobbie, the office boy, "take this batch of letters and presents over to Miss Sanderson's desk and tell her to call an expressman and forward 'em to that woman who was always tired!"

       The Little Reporter looked up with a shrug of annoyance and protestation.

       "Haven't ye got her address?" asked the boy, sympathetically, then quickly he added, "Course not! She wouldn't give that, I guess, after all she told ye!"

☙      ☙      ☙

       At the office they began to notice that the Little Reporter over in her corner losing somewhat of her blithe manner. Her cheeks were paling and her eyes saddened and took on the look that comes of little sleep. In and out of the office, then intermittently at her desk, on which there now was scarce space for the moving of her pen, she worked on as was her custom, taking an assignment first here, then there, but her cheery laugh was now infrequent, and only occasionally came a flash of wit in her hurried conversations with the different members of the staff. They tried to joke her about the heroine of her story, but she failed to respond with her old-time repartee.

       "So those cuts have come at last!" exclaimed the city editor one afternoon as a messenger boy bore toward him an oblong cardboard box. He stretched out his hands for it. "For 'The Woman Who Was So Tired! Please forward." This was the inscription on the attached label, and on the box, in gold letters, "Blank & Co., Florists, —– Broadway."

       "Hang 'The Woman Who Was So Tired!'" he cried out angrily, then pointing to the desk where sat the Little Reporter, he added a bit softly, "Take 'em over to that lady."

       She drew out from the box a dozen American Beauty roses, and hanging to the wide ribbon which bound their stems was a card. It read, "From a tired man to a tired woman."

       She put them in the ice-water pitcher. They were beautiful roses and costly, and they shone out gloriously from among the heaps of parcels and letters addressed "To the Woman Who Was So Tired." The Little Reporter's fingers trembled on her pencil and a drop splashed down upon the yellow copy paper. For a moment her hand pressed her temple, then she dropped her face in her hands. The city editor walked over to her.

       "Are you sick, Miss Sanderson?" he asked, kindly.

       "No-o-o," she drawled.

       "I hope you haven't had some bad news?"

       "No," she said again. "It's just about that 'Woman Who Was So Tired.' It's on my conscience. I can't rest — I — I —"

       Nearly she broke down. Her eyes were growing big and shiny.

       "All these letters, these bundles, these roses, oh! I didn't think it would turn out like this — how could I know people would go on so? I had to get a story. I couldn't waste all that time — I hunted and searched until 9 o'clock that night, and I just —"

       "Don't say you faked it," interrupted the city editor. "I know it's true; everybody knows it's true!"

       "I didn't make it up. It was all true — oh, don't you understand? I was IT!"

       Her face went down among the roses and the parcels.

       The city editor gazed about the room, yet seeing none of the rush and the turmoil connected with getting out the next morning's paper, hearing none of the click of the typewriters nor the din at telegraph tables. And this was "The Woman Who Was So Tired!" Their own Little Reporter, who went in and out among them, so unconsciously cheerful, so full of the joy of life and work, calling out sometimes when she had finished two columns, "Find something else for me so I can run up a nice space bill this week!"

       His mind traveled over the details of the story that had stirred so many hearts. The woman had appeared to be a book canvasser, working on commission — how like a reporter working on space and scouring the town for news! Frail and young, she had a whole family of dependents. In the story she had gone out in the ice and sleet, had slipped three times and turned her ankle. Instinctively he looked at the Little Reporter's feet and noticed that she was wearing odd shoes, the one shoe much larger than the other, doubtless because of the swelling of her sprained ankle. Why, on the night of the day when he had sent her out had she not returned laughing and limping?

       He looked out of the window, out over the towering skyscrapers of great New York, where daily he had sent her to bring in news of the city's joys and sorrows, its weddings and its funerals, its prayers and its cursings, its virtue and its vice, its feasting and its fasting. "The Woman Who Was So Tired" was often hungry! Had the Little Reporter ever lacked for food? Involuntarily his eye traveled back to her desk and rested upon the large-printed quotation one of the men reporters had jestingly hung above it the morning they had published her particularly racy and sparkling account of a banquet at Sherry's:

       "Who writes the fine report of the feast?
She who got none and enjoyed it least!"

       For three years now the Little Reporter had been on his staff, the one woman among a dozen men, At first he had hesitated about taking her on, she had seemed so tiny, so young, so irresponsible. She had never spoken of her family, her home. Who would have suspected the burden she carried so lightly upon her slight shoulders? And on the day he had sent her out to write of the "most anything woman" she could find in New York, surely there must have been some special reason at home why "good space" was necessary to her that day! Once he had laughingly called her an Oliver Twist, because she was always "asking for more" space. He had always suspected she spent large sums for clothes, for she dressed smartly with stylish gowns and nobby hats, but the woman of her story made her own dresses and hats on Sundays and after midnight! When did the Little Reporter get time to sleep?

       From the high window he looked out again over busy, laughing, sorrowing, noisy, seething New York, then again at the head of the Little Reporter still sunk upon her desk, then around upon the men in the room.

       "I expect," he said to himself, "we sometimes forget up here in our tower of observation that we, too, are a part of New York, and perhaps New York also forgets it. We're just a part, a part of it all, and how like we are, how very like!"

       They were wanting him at his own desk and he hurried over, yet turning an instant to look again at the Little Reporter, and say a kindly word to reassure her troubled heart, he saw that her hand had fallen away from her face and that she was fast asleep in the midst of the hubbub of the city room.

       And he tripped off softly and motioned away Bobbie, who was hurrying to her with proofs, lest he disturb and awaken the woman who was so tired.

(THE END)