Then came a space. A few letters more and it was
Dimly drouse the dreary droves
Phipps had one eyebrow raised. I lifted the cover plate again. Quickly.
There I saw a fuzzy thing. It whisked out of sight. I snapped the plate down and held it down. The party I had been on the night before hadn't been that good and I had had at least three hours' sleep.
I tried typing again. I got nothing until I started a new line. Then out came
Primly prides the privy prose
I banged up the plate, saw a blur of something slinking down between the type bar levers again. Whatever it was, it managed to squeeze itself out of sight in a most amazing way.
"Hey!" I said. "I know you're down there. What's the big idea?"
Fuzzy squeezed his head up from the levers. The head looked like that of a mouse, but it had teeth like a chipmunk and bright little black beads for eyes. They looked right at me.
"You go right ahead," he said in a shrill voice. "This is going to be a great poem. Did you get all that alliteration there in those two lines?"