"Nothing to speak of," said Pride. "Turned up at the office at eleven, but there was nothing doing until after lunch. Then I had to go and see Sir William Darton—they're going to start the Thames Steamboats again. He wasn't at home, and he wasn't in his office, but I found him at six o'clock in the Constitutional. Got back and found they'd sent home for my dress clothes, and left a nice little envelope with the ticket of the Canadian Dinner.... That's why I'm so late to-night...."
Pride filled his own pipe, and sighed. "The old days are over!" he said. "They used to post our assignments overnight—'Dear Mr Pride, kindly do a quarter of a column of the enclosed meeting.' Why, The Sentinel used to allow us five shillings every time we put on evening dress."
"Well, The Sentinel was a pretty dull paper before the Kelmscotts bought it and turned it into a halfpenny," said Harlem. "Look at it now, a nice, bright paper—oh, by the way, do you know Cannock," he jerked his head to the man at his side. "He's The Sentinel's latest acquisition. This is Tommy Pride, one of the ancient bulwarks of The Sentinel, until they fired him. Now he's learning to be a halfpenny journalist."
Pride looked at the young man.
"I don't know about being the latest acquisition," Cannock said. "As a matter of fact, they've fired me to-day."
"It's a hobby of theirs now," Harlem remarked. "You'll get a job on The Day if you ask for one. There's always room with us, ain't there, Tommy?"
Pride looked wistfully at the clouds of blue smoke that rose from his lips.... Yes, he thought, there was always room on The Day—at any moment they might decide to make alterations in the staff. The fact of Cannock's being sacked mattered nothing; he was a young man, and for young men, knocking at the door of Fleet Street, there was always an open pathway. Think of the papers there were left to work for—the evenings and the dailies, and even when they were exhausted, perhaps a job on a weekly paper, or the editorship of one of the scores of penny and sixpenny magazines. And, after that, the provinces and the suburbs had their papers. Pride knew: in his long experience he had wandered from one paper to another, two years here, three years here, until the halfpenny papers had brought a new type of journalist into the street.
"Married?" asked Pride.
"Not me!" replied Cannock, with a slight hiccough.
"Well, you're all right. You can free-lance if you want to."