He came to Humphrey one day and remarked quite casually, "I've given old Worthing the push."
Humphrey looked at him: he wore a Norfolk jacket, with old trousers, and a tweed hat of no shape at all. Beaver took his pipe out of his mouth, and Humphrey noticed the short nails on his stumpy, fat fingers. Beaver always bit his nails.
"I've given old Worthing the push," said Beaver. "Look at this." He showed a letter to Humphrey, who saw that it was from the "Special News Agency" of London, employing Beaver in their service at £2, 10s. a week.
"How did you get it?" Humphrey asked.
"Wrote in," said Beaver, gnawing a finger-tip. "Been writing in on the quiet for the last year. Fed up with old Worthing and filling up time at case."
"I thought you had to know how to write well if you wanted to work in London," Humphrey said. There were no illusions about Beaver's style.
"Oh! the Agency doesn't want writing—it wants a man who can take down shorthand verbatim.... I'm off next week," said Beaver.
Humphrey looked longingly at him and his letter, and then round at the whitewashed walls of the office, with its Calendars and local Directories for years past on the shelf, and the pile of Gazettes on the corner of the counter. Mr Worthing passed through the office, stopped, and scowled at Beaver.
"Kindly remove your head-gear in the front office," he said, and Beaver, with the unmurmuring discipline of years which nothing could break, took off the crumpled tweed thing he called a hat.
"Nice pig, isn't he?" Beaver said to Humphrey, as Worthing went out. "We had an awful row. Said I ought to have given him a month's notice. A week would have been good enough for me if he was doing the sacking. Pig in knickers, that's what he is," said Beaver, defiantly. "This is a Hole."