"You're a big baby!" the city editor pronounced disgustedly, coming up to my desk and lowering his voice. "I knew you were going to cry."
"I—I think I may be coming down with typhoid," I said coldly, to keep from encouraging him in conversation. "And I've got a terrible lot of work to do before it gets quite dark. Really, an awful lot."
He dropped back a few paces, then circled nearer once more.
"Got anything—special?" he asked aimlessly.
His manner was so entirely inconsequential that I knew he had the most important thing for a month up his sleeve.
"Do you call this—mess anything special?" I asked. "I've got to do a general house-cleaning, and I wish I had a vacuum machine that would suck the whole business up into its mouth, swallow it and digest it—so I'd never see a scrap of it again."
Have I said before that he was a middle-aged man, named Hudson, and had scant red hair? It doesn't make any special difference about his looks, since I hadn't taken any rash vow to marry the first unfortunate man who crossed my path, but he looked so ludicrously insignificant and unlike an instrument of fate as he stood there, trying to break the news to me by degrees.
"Hate your ordinary work this afternoon?" he asked.
"I hate everything."
"Then, how would you like to change off a little?"