'Can you undertake to print an eight-page paper?' inquired De Haan.
'If I can print at all, I can print anything,' responded Gluck reproachfully. 'How many shall you want?'
'It's the orthodox paper we've been planning so long,' said De Haan evasively.
Gluck nodded his head.
'There are seventy thousand orthodox Jews in London alone,' said De Haan with rotund enunciation. 'So you see what you may have to print. It'll be worth your while to do it extra cheap.'
Gluck agreed readily, naming a low figure. After half an hour's discussion it was reduced by ten per cent.
'Good-bye, then,' said De Haan. 'So let it stand. We shall start with a thousand copies of the first number, but where we shall end, the Holy One—blessed be He!—alone knows. I will now leave you and the editor to talk over the rest. To-day's Monday. We must have the first number out by Friday week. Can you do that, Mr. Leon?'
'Oh, that will be ample,' said Raphael, shooting out his arms.
He did not remain of that opinion. Never had he gone through such an awful, anxious time, not even in his preparations for the stiffest exams. He worked sixteen hours a day at the paper. The only evening he allowed himself off was when he dined with Mrs. Henry Goldsmith and met Esther. First numbers invariably take twice as long to produce as second numbers, even in the best regulated establishments. All sorts of mysterious sticks and leads and founts and formes are found wanting at the eleventh hour. As a substitute for grey hair-dye, there is nothing in the market to compete with the production of first numbers. But in Gluck's establishment these difficulties were multiplied by a hundred. Gluck spent a great deal of time in going round the corner to get something from a brother printer. It took enormous time to get a proof of any article out of Gluck.
'My men are so careful,' Gluck explained. 'They don't like to pass anything till it's free from typos.'