“M-make it beautiful,” says Mark, “but also make it quick!”
“Young sir,” says Tecumseh, “no compositor between the Broad Atlantic and the boundless Pacific can vie with me in speed. I shall show you.”
And he dodged out into the composing-room so quickly his head seemed to snap like the snapper on the end of a horse-whip.
“I’m afraid,” says Mark, “that Tecumseh’s bothered with what some folks call artistic t-t-temperament. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but it’s hard to m-manage.”
“You’ll manage it, all right,” says Tallow. “I’ll bet you could drive two artistic temperaments in a team.”
“I’d hate to try,” says Mark, but you could see he was tickled. He always likes to be appreciated—and so do the rest of us, I guess.
“Now,” says he, “Plunk and Tallow, scatter and hunt up news. Don’t miss anythin’. F-f-fetch in everything you get to hear, and we’ll use all we can that’s really n-news. Now git—and don’t loaf.”
“Huh!” says Plunk. “Guess we hain’t any more apt to loaf than you are.”
“Reporters always try to loaf,” says Mark. “I read it in a book.”
Then Mark says to me that he shouldn’t be surprised if it would be a good idea for me to go to the hotel and find out who was registered there, and what they came to town for, and how long they were going to stay.