Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/208

 his senior sulky. A grumpy "hello" was all the greeting he ever got. That so old a man should "play baby" struck Hunt as comic, and his subordinate s grudging welcome was become an enjoyment which through force of indulgence he unconsciously demanded. Therefore, to-night, when on coming into the office he found Master s chair empty he felt vaguely aggrieved. He thought of himself, charitably, as missing the elder man: what he did actually miss was the agreeable fillip which the spectacle of the old man s glumness always gave his sense of humour.

Perhaps, however, his indefinite feeling of discomfort was due in part to the cheerless aspect of the room. Usually when he entered the place it was lighted and occupied; to-night no one was about, and the one gas jet that was burning showed a mere tooth of flame within its wire muzzle. The little closets of the reporters, each with a desk and a chair in it, which were ranged like so many doorless state-rooms against the sides of the apartment, appeared dimly in the gloom as black, uncanny hole?. On the fourth side, under the gaslight and covered with a disorderly array of shears, pencils, bottles of mucilage, and of ink, pens and paper, was the big and battered night-desk. Recognisable above it by persons unhappily familiar with such objects, were the electric messenger call and fire alarm. Higher still, there perched in solitary state upon a shelf a dusty and dented gas-meter. The dirty floor was littered with rumpled and torn newspapers, splotched with tobacco juice, and strewn with the ends of cigars and cigarettes. Nauseating black beetles scampered everywhere, lurked in corners and cracks, and rustled in the papers. Five were drinking from the inkstand. The atmosphere was heavy with the odours of damp paper, printer's ink, and stale tobacco. "Such," reflected Hunt with grim humour, "is the golden East from which appears the worshipped Dawn." Hunt,