"Nice pig, isn't he?" Beaver said to Humphrey, as Worthing went out. "We had an awful row. Said I ought to have given him a month's notice. A week would have been good enough for me if he was doing the sacking. Pig in knickers, that's what he is," said Beaver, defiantly. "This is a Hole."
"Oh, Beaver!" cried Humphrey, hopelessly. "It is a Hole. He _is_ a Pig.... But what's going to happen to me?"
"I can't write shorthand. Besides, I don't want to. How old are you, Beaver?"
"Thirty!" thought Humphrey; fancy Beaver having wasted all these years in doing nothing but local reporting. Would he have to work ten years more and still achieve nothing further than Beaver. There must be some way out of it. Beaver had found it, and surely he could.
"It's fine for you," Humphrey said, admiringly now, for, in the blankness of Beaver leaving the office where they had worked, he had forgotten to congratulate him. "The Special News Agency is the biggest in London, isn't it."
"Rather," said Beaver, comfortably. "It's a life job." That was his ambition. "Look here, young Quain, I think you're too good for Easterham, too. Those notes of yours, you know.... I used to read 'em every week. Not at all bad.... You take my tip, and do a turn at reporting for a while, and then when you've got the hang of things write in. Write in to all the London papers. Say you've had good provincial experience--'provincial' sounds better than local. You'll see. You're bound to get replies. Say you're a good all-round man. Enclose a stamped envelope." Beaver sauntered to and fro, nibbling at a nail between excited sentences. "Oh, and don't you forget it. Write on _Easterham Gazette_ notepaper."
And when, a week later, Beaver left, Worthing asked Humphrey to try his hand at the police-court, Humphrey accepted the inevitable, and tried to improve on the style of the police reports. Worthing swore at him and rewrote them all, and told him to model his style on that of the late Mr Beaver.
Whereupon Humphrey, seeing that he would never Get On if he were to live in the shadow of Beaver, sat down, and "wrote in."
He wrote to _The Day_, because he bought the paper every morning, and thought it was wonderful.
The day that Ferrol's reply arrived was a day of triumph for Humphrey. The letter came to him with unbelievable promptness, asking him to call at the office.... Never again did Humphrey recapture the fine emotion that thrilled him as he read and re-read the letter. Looking back on it, he saw that those moments were among the most glorious in his life; he stood on the threshold of a world of promise and enchantment, suddenly revealed to him by this scrap of paper with _The Day_ in embossed blue letters, surrounded by telephone numbers and telegraphic addresses of the great newspaper.