"What was the rumpus upstairs, do you know? It sounded as if somebody had a bad fall."
"Somebody did get a fall, though not a bad one, I believe."
"Who?" queried the editor briefly.
"I."
In the hall, it occurred to Queed that perhaps he had misled his chief a little, though speaking the literal truth. The fall that some body had gotten was indeed nothing much, for people's bodies counted for nothing so long as they kept them under. But the fall that this body's self-esteem had gotten was no such trivial affair. It struck the young man as decidedly curious that the worst tumble his pride had ever received had come to him through his body, that part of him which he had always treated with the most systematic contempt.
The elevator received him, and in it, as luck would have it, stood a tall young man whom he knew quite well.
"Hello, there, Doc!"
"How do you do, Mr. Klinker?"
"Been up chinning your sporting editor, Ragsy Hurd. Trying to arrange a mill at the Mercury between Smithy of the Y.M.C.A. and Hank McGurk, the White Plains Cyclone."
"A mill—?"