In one corner of the room Selsey was busy with Hargreave, the assistant night editor, and as Humphrey went up he saw that they were still cutting out things from printed proofs, and altering headings. And on an iron-topped table great squares of type rested--the forms just as he had seen them in the _Easterham Gazette_ office--only they were bigger, and the "furniture"--the odd wedge-shaped pieces of wood which they used in Easterham to lock the type firmly in between the frames, was abandoned for a simpler contrivance in iron. And there were Selsey and Hargreave peering at the first pages of _The Day_ in solid type, reading it from right to left, as one reads Hebrew, and suddenly Hargreave would say: "Well we'd better take out the last ten lines of that, and shift this half-way down the column, and put this Reuter message at the top with a splash heading," or else, putting a finger on a square of type, "take that out altogether, that'll give us room." And he would glance up at the clock, with the anxiety of a man who knows there are trains to catch.
No question of writing here.... No time for sentiment.... No time to think, "Poor devil, those ten lines cost, perhaps, hours of work," or, "Those ten lines were thought by their writer to be literature." Literature be hanged! It was only cold type, leaden letters squeezed into square frames--leaden letters that will be melted down on the morrow--type, and the whole paper to be printed, and trains for the delivery carts to catch, if people would have papers before breakfast. And the aproned men brought other squares of type, and printed rough impressions of them, so that Humphrey caught a glimpse of one of the pages at shortly after midnight of a paper that would be new to people at eight o'clock the next morning. He felt the pride of a privileged person.
Selsey caught sight of him. "Hullo, Quain ... what are you doing here?"
Hargreave pounced upon him. "Any good? Is it worth a contents bill?" he asked, excitedly.
"There hasn't been any accident worth speaking of. No one hurt, I mean."
"All right. Let it go," said Selsey, calmly. Hargreave went away to haggle with the foreman over something. Nobody was relieved to hear that the accident had not been serious.
