"You'd better go over to Mr. Daggett's," he advised. "He'll let you have some."
Bobby crossed the street, climbed a stairway slanting outside a square wooden store building and for the first time found himself in a printing office.
Tall stands held tier after tier of type-cases, slid in like drawers. The tops were slanted. On them stood other cases, their queerly arranged and various-sized compartments exposed to view. Down the centre of the room ran a long table. One end of it was heaped with printed matter in piles and in packages, the other was topped with smooth stone on which rested forms made up. Shelves filled with stationery, cans and the like ran down one side the room. Beyond the table were two presses, a big and a little. In one corner stood a table with a gas jet over it. In another was an open sink with running water. A thin man in dirty shirt-sleeves was setting type from one of the cases. Another, shorter man at the stone-topped table was tapping lightly with a mallet on a piece of wood which he moved here and there over a form. A boy of fifteen was printing at the smaller of the presses. A huge figure was sprawled over the table in the corner. In the air hung the delicious smell of printer's ink and the clank and chug of the press.
Bobby stood in the doorway some time. Finally the boy said something to the man at the table. The latter looked up, then arose and came forward.
He was of immense frame, but gaunt and caved-in from much stooping and a consumptive tendency. His massive bony shoulders hung forward; his head was carried in advance. In character this head was like that of a Jove condemned through centuries to long hours in a dark, unwholesome atmosphere--the grand, square, bony structure, the thick, upstanding hair, the bushy, steady eyebrows, the heavy beard. But the cheeks beneath the beard were sunken; the eyes in the square-cut caverns were kind and gentle--and very weary.
"I want to see if I can get some ink of you," requested Bobby, holding out his little tin box.
Mr. Daggett took the box without replying; and, opening it, tested with his finger the quality and colour of what it had contained.
He led the way to one of the shelves and opened a can as big as a bucket. Bobby gasped.