"Hullo!" cried Beaver, shifting his chair away a few inches, and seriously incommoding a grey-haired man so absorbed in his game of chess that his coffee was cold and untouched. "Come and sit here," cried Beaver.
They shook hands. "Well, how goes it?" Humphrey asked. "Still with the nose to the grindstone?"
"That's it," Beaver said. Their positions had been changed since the days of Easterham, when Beaver seemed miles above him in worldly success. He remembered the day Beaver left for London, to embark on a career which shone clear and brilliant in Humphrey's imagination. "Write in!" Those had been Beaver's last words. "Write in. That's what I did." The vision of it all rose before him now, as he sat by Beaver: the dingy office, with the scent of the fishmonger next door, the auctioneer's bills on the walls, with samples of mourning and wedding cards, and tradesmen's invoice headings, to show the excellence of the _Gazette's_ jobbing department. And now--? He was conscious of a change in Beaver's attitude towards him.
Humphrey had taken his place in Fleet Street among the personalities, among the young men of promise and achievement. He had even seen his name signed to occasional articles in _The Day_--glorious thrill, splendid emotion, that repaid all the long anonymous hours of patient work!
"You're getting on!" Beaver said. There was admiration unconcealed in his eyes and voice. "Great Scott! It seems impossible that you and I ever worked together on that rotten Easterham paper. That was a fine story you did of the Hextable Railway Smash."
"I've got nothing to complain of," Humphrey replied, hacking at a roll of bread. "It hasn't been easy work. Yours isn't, for the matter of that."
Beaver laughed. "Oh, mine--it isn't difficult, you know. I get so used to it, that I can report a speech mechanically without even thinking of the speaker."
"It's a safe job, you know," he said, after a pause. "A life job."
Humphrey knew what Beaver's exultation in the safety of his job meant.
There were men in Fleet Street, husbands of wives, and fathers of families, who lived and worked tremblingly from day to day, never certain when a fatal envelope would not contain the irrevocable "regret" of the editor that he could no longer continue the engagement.