Clambering down off the stool, Noll carried it back to his desk, took down a tall silk hat, ran his coat-sleeve round it, and put it on his head.
Netherby Gomme coughed:
“Oliver,” said he—hesitated—made a pause—then added nervously: “Oliver, I am going to confide in you. In fact, if I don’t I shall get some sort of low malarial fever. Now, don’t treat the confidence with the giggle of childishness.”
Noll sighed. He turned, leaped on to his office-stool, swung round, set his feet on the bar, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his palms, and, peering at the other out of the shadow from under the brim of his hat, said gloomily:
“O lor! the little typewriter girl!... Why the dickens you don’t kiss Julia and have done with it, Netherby, I can’t make out. Hang it, I have!... It was very nice whilst it lasted, and all that, but there was nothing in it to write poetry about!”
Netherby Gomme flushed.
“Oliver,” said he, with biting distinctness, “we have not yet shown the resentment that your vulgarity courts; but we would remind you that we may be goaded into flinging the office ink-pot——” He stretched out his long arm towards the large zinc well of ink before him.
Noll slid off the stool, putting it between them with the swift and calculated strategy of experience, guarding his head with his raised elbow:
“Chuck it, Netherby!” he bawled, dodging under cover of his desk warily; and he added in a hoarse aside, jerking his thumb towards the editor’s door: “Chuck it! I withdraw.”
The yellow-haired youth put down the heavy ink-pot.