Gareth found it well-nigh impossible to concentrate on his work. It was the more difficult since Ran Wyman and Graham Carr, the one accidentally and the other by intent, had both established themselves in the outer office, to catch a glimpse of their future colleague.
"Is he going to write for the 'White 'Un'?"
"Sure. And crowd us all out. Your days are numbered, Carr; you know what the chief is like over a new swan of intellect. And he's keen on paying out poor old Alex for taking that ghastly South-African serial."
"What—by those Frinton-on-Sea people?—Kate and Jasper Thurgood? Nonsense, Wyman, he hasn't! Not for the 'White 'Un'!"
"He has, and I've seen it," chuckled Ran Wyman. "Six hundred pages of 'Queer thraldom of the Veldt.' Treks and kraals and kopjes sprinkled like pepper; and a heroine with a Biblical name who stands all day long in a doorway, her blouse minus its top button to show the full generous curves of her bosom."
"Oh well, if Alex, curse his hardened greed-bitten soul, is out for that sort of thing, he'd better ask Gilman for a contribution at once. I came across a pearl of Gilman's the other day, in an old paper-back: 'The Earl of all the Beaumaynes behaved at the dinner-party with the simplicity and affability that distinguishes true breeding from its counterfeit brother'—yes, really, I'm not making this up ... listen: 'Several times he even took an entrée-dish from the servant's hand, and helped Gracie himself, that the blushing girl might feel more at her ease....' My servant can't understand what's come to me lately at my little informal dinner-parties, when I keep on snatching the dishes away from him; he doesn't know that I'm emulating the aristocracy."
"You probably only succeed in behaving like its 'counterfeit brother.' But what a priceless person Gilman is!" Wyman picked up an eccentric headgear in yellow felt. "After all, I shan't stay to cheer our infant prodigy. His conceit will doubtless be enormous without the added compliment that is bound to be shed by my presence. Conceit is for the poor in spirit, n'est ce pas, Jimmy, mon enfant?" and tweaking, as he passed, the ear of the Heart-breaker, who interrupted his whistling by a soul-shattering yell, Wyman slammed the glass door; then returned to say: "Bring him round to supper some time next week, Carr, if he's presentable"—and ran downstairs.
"H'any more, Mr. Temple?"
"Yes, these can go." Gareth handed Jimmy a couple of brown-paper-bound manuscripts. He wished Carr and Burnett would likewise depart, and leave him in peace to ... wait for Patricia. But they lingered on, exchanging anecdotes of the profession.
"Can I see Mr. Campbell?"