Then the editor rang a bell.
'Send Mr. Heeky to me, quick!' he commanded the messenger-boy.
'I'm just finishing that leaderette,' began Mr. Heeley, when he obeyed the summons. Mr. Heeley was a young man who had published a book of verse.
'Never mind the leaderette,' said the editor. 'Run across to the other shop yourself, and see if they've got a copy of A Question of Cubits—yes, that's it, A Question of Cubits—and do me fifteen inches on it at once. I've lost Clackmannan's "copy."' (The 'other shop' was a wing occupied by a separate journal belonging to the proprietors of the Tribune.)
'What, that thing!' exclaimed Mr. Heeley. 'Won't it do to-morrow? You know I hate messing my hands with that sort of piffle.'
'No, it won't do to-morrow. I met Onions Winter at dinner on Saturday night, and I told him I'd review it on the day of publication. And when I promise a thing I promise it. Cut, my son! And I say'—the editor recalled Mr. Heeley, who was gloomily departing—'We're under no obligations to anyone. Write what you think, but, all the same, no antics, no spleen. You've got to learn yet that that isn't our speciality. You're not on the Whitehall now.'
'Oh, all right, chief—all right!' Mr. Heeley concurred.
Five minutes later Mr. Heeley entered what he called his private boudoir, bearing a satinesque volume.
'Here, boys,' he cried to two other young men who were already there, smoking clay pipes—'here's a lark! The chief wants fifteen inches on this charming and pathetic art-work as quick as you can. And no antics, he says. Here, Jack, here's fifty pages for you'—Mr. Heeley ripped the beautiful inoffensive volume ruthlessly in pieces—and here's fifty for you, Clementina. Tell me your parts of the plot I'll deal with the first fifty my noble self.'