Humphrey had taken his place in Fleet Street among the personalities, among the young men of promise and achievement. He had even seen his name signed to occasional articles in The Day—glorious thrill, splendid emotion, that repaid all the long anonymous hours of patient work!
"You're getting on!" Beaver said. There was admiration unconcealed in his eyes and voice. "Great Scott! It seems impossible that you and I ever worked together on that rotten Easterham paper. That was a fine story you did of the Hextable Railway Smash."
"I've got nothing to complain of," Humphrey replied, hacking at a roll of bread. "It hasn't been easy work. Yours isn't, for the matter of that."
Beaver laughed. "Oh, mine—it isn't difficult, you know. I get so used to it, that I can report a speech mechanically without even thinking of the speaker."
"It's a safe job, you know," he said, after a pause. "A life job."
Humphrey knew what Beaver's exultation in the safety of his job meant.
There were men in Fleet Street, husbands of wives, and fathers of families, who lived and worked tremblingly from day to day, never certain when a fatal envelope would not contain the irrevocable "regret" of the editor that he could no longer continue the engagement.
Why, it might happen to Humphrey himself, for aught he knew. Truly, Beaver was to be envied after all.
"But don't you think you'd do better on a daily paper?" Humphrey said. "I could tell Rivers about you, you know. There might be room on The Day."