It was Beaver's duty to make the "calls" during the week. How he managed them all, I don't know; but in the intervals of attending the police-court, the council meetings, and all the meetings of local organizations, he would call at the hospital, at the mayor's parlour, on the town clerk, on the churches and cathedrals, snapping up unconsidered trifles in the shape of accidents, civic news, church services, and all the other activities of Easterham life. Sometimes during the week Beaver would swing himself astride a bicycle, as frayed and as shabby as himself, and pedal to Wimberly, or Pooleham, or further afield to Great Huxton for local meetings, all of which were of vast interest to the Easterham Gazette, since its copies went weekly—or were supposed to go—over the whole of the county, and it had annexed to its title the names of all the best villages. Its full title, by the way, was: Easterham Gazette, and Wimberly, Pooleham, Great Huxton, Middle Huxton and Little Huxton Chronicle; Coomber, Melsdom and Upper Thornton Journal, largest circulation in any district, weekly one penny. It was nigh upon sixty years of age, and therefore its tottering infirmity may be excused.
Humphrey Quain came into the office ostensibly as a clerk. In the beginning he thought it was a fascinating game seeing the things that one wrote in print. Therefore, all unconsciously, he started to write. He began with "Cycle Notes" and "Theatre Notes," and presently he found himself with sufficient interest to fill a whole column, which dealt mainly with local gossip, and was called "The Easterham Letter." It was addressed always to the editor and was signed "P and Q." When he was not writing, he was addressing wrappers or making out the weekly bills for the newsagents; and every Friday evening he stood by the counter, folding up the papers as they came to him, and handing them to grubby little children who were sent by the newsagents, or sold the papers for themselves in the streets.
It really was a remarkable paper for the twentieth century. Its advertisement space was one shilling an inch, or less if you promised not to tell any one; three men, of course, could not fill the whole of these eight great sheets, and therefore the carrier's wagon delivered every Thursday to the Easterham Gazette office, mysterious thin brown parcels the size of a column, and rather heavy. Simultaneously, all over the country, like parcels were being delivered, and, if by chance you compared an issue of the Easterham Gazette with any thirty local papers in the North, South, or East of England, you would have been amazed at the remarkable similarity of their contents. They had the same serial story of thrilling adventure, the same "Cookery Notes and Kitchen Recipes," the same "Home Hints to Household Happiness," word for word, and the same column of jokes.
For these long parcels that arrived every Thursday at the Easterham Gazette office were columns of type cast from moulds, sent down from a London Agency which has made a mighty business of supplying general matter, from foreign intelligence to fashion notes, ready for the printing-press, at so much a column. They call it "stereo."
Humphrey Quain had been in the office for three years. His aunt was a friend of Mr Worthing, the editor, and his father thought it would be a good thing for the boy to have some association with the world of letters, however distant. Shortly afterwards, Quain senior had taken a master's appointment in a private boarding-school at Southsea, and Humphrey remained with his aunt. A year later his father died.
He parted with his father with a straining heart, for Daniel Quain was a tremendous success as a father, though he was a failure as a man. Of course this was only Humphrey's point of view: what more could a boy want than a father who could fashion any kind of toy, from whistles to steamboats, out of a block of wood; who knew enough of elementary science to make a pin sail on water, by letting it rest on a cigarette paper which soaked and sank away, leaving the pin afloat; who could blow a halfpenny from one wine-glass to another, and produce whooing sounds from a hollow tube by placing it over a gas flame. Wonderful father!
It was Daniel who fostered in Humphrey's heart the love of reading: those early books were adventure stories by Fenimore Cooper, Kingston and Ballantyne. He read Harrison Ainsworth, too, and Henty, and took in the Boy's Own Paper, and, in short, did everything in the way of reading that a normal, happy, healthy-minded boy should do. "Keep clear of philosophy until you are thirty," Daniel said one day, as he was showing him how three matches can be made to stand upright; "then you won't understand enough of life to be miserable."
Later, he came to the Dickens and Thackeray stage, but he was pained to find he could not enjoy Scott. He confided his distaste to his father, as though it were a guilty failing of which to be ashamed.
"Form your own likes and dislikes in reading as in everything else," said Daniel. "Don't be a literary snob, and pretend you enjoy the acquaintance of books merely because they belong so to speak to the 'upper ten' of the book-world."