Humphrey sighed, rose, stood looking down at the bills and letters and canvas books; pressed a hand again against his eyes; wandered to the press-room door and looked, pursing his lips, knitting his brows, at the row of job presses, at the big cylinder press that extended nearly across the rear end of the long room, at the row of type cases on their high stands, at imposing-stones on heavy tables. He sniffed the odour of ink, damp paper, and long, respected dust that hung over the whole establishment. He smiled, moodily, as his eye rested on the gray and black roller towel that hung above the iron sink, recalling Bob Burdette's verses. He returned to the office, and stood for a few moments before the file of the _Gleaner_ on the wall desk by the door, turning the pages of recent issues. From each number a story by Henry Calverly, 3rd, seemed to leap out at his eyes and his brain. _The Caliph of Simpson Street, Sinbad the Treasurer, A Kerbstone Barmecide, The Cauliflowers of the Caliph, The Printer and the Pearls, Ali Anderson and the Four Policemen_--the very titles singing aloud of the boy's extraordinary gift.
'And it's all we've got here,' mused Humphrey, moving back to his own desk. 'That mad child makes us, or we break. I've got to humour him, protect him. Can't even show him these bills. Like getting all your light and heat from a candle that may get blown out any minute.' And before dropping heavily into his chair, glancing at his watch, drawing his eye-shade down, and plunging again at the heavy problem of keeping a country weekly alive without sufficient advertising revenue, he added, aloud, with a wry, wrinkly smile that yet gave him a momentary whimsical attractiveness: 'That's the devil of it!'
The door opened slowly. A red face appeared, under a tipped-down Derby hat; a face decorated with a bristling red moustache and a richly carmine nose.
Humphrey peered; then considered. It was Tim Niernan, one-time fire chief, now village constable.
'Young Calverly here?' asked the official in a husky voice.
Humphrey shook his head. His thoughts, momentarily disarranged, were darting this way and that.
'What is it, Tim? What do you want of him?'
'Why, you see Charlie Waterhouse's suing him.'