George shook his head. “Pop eagerly awaits the day. He’s sixty-nine and wants to retire. He’s just staying on until I can do without him. Here’s the press—a honey of a little Miehle; we do some job work on it, too. And this is the office, in front. Messy, but efficient.”
Mulvaney looked around him and grinned. “George, I believe you’ve found your niche. You were cut out for a small-town editor.”
“Cut out for it? I’m crazy about it. I have more fun than everybody. Believe it or not, I work like a dog, and like it. Come on upstairs.”
On the stairs, Pete asked, “And the novel you were going to write?”
“Half done, and it isn’t bad. But it isn’t the novel I was going to write; I was a cynic then. Now—”
“George, I think the waveries were your best friends.”
“Waveries?”
“Lord, how long does it take slang to get from New York out to the sticks? The vaders. of course. Some professor who specializes in studying them described one as a wavery place in the ether, and ‘wavery’ stuck—Hello there, Maisie, my girl. You look like a million.”
They ate leisurely. Almost apologetically, George brought out beer, in cold bottles. “Sorry, Pete, haven’t anything stronger to offer you. But I haven’t been drinking lately. Guess—”
“ You on the wagon, George?”