It was very
important, indeed," she added, in so sad a voice that the red-haired
boy gazed at her in some astonishment.
"My word," he said, "then you do not know?"
"Don't know what?"
"Why, we has had a funeral here."
"A funeral--oh, dear! oh, dear! is the editor of _The Joy-bell_ dead?"
Here the red-haired boy burst into a peal of irrepressible laughter.
"Dead! he ain't dead, but _The Joy-bell_ is; we had her funeral last
week."
Poor Jasmine staggered against the wall, and her pretty face became
ghastly white.
"Oh, boy," she said, "do tell me about it; how can _The Joy-bell_ be
dead, and have a funeral? Oh, please, don't jest with me, for it's so
important."
The genuine distress in her tones touched at last some vulnerable
point in the facetious office-boy's breast.
"I'm real sorry for you, miss," he said, "particular as you seems so
cut up; but what I tell you is true, and you had better know it. That
editor has gone, and _The Joy-bell_ is decently interred. I was at her
birth, and I was at her funeral. She had a short life, and was never
up to much. I never guessed she'd hold out as long as she did; but the
editor was a cute one, and for a time he bamboozled his authors, and
managed to live on them.
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