'Just so. But you'll try and do your best, Mr Denison? Well, come in this evening at eight o'clock, and see Mr Pinkham, the sub-editor. He'll show you what to do. Salary, £2, 15s. Strict sobriety, I trust?'
The successful one said he never got quite drunk, expressed his thanks and withdrew. Once into the street he walked quickly into Sum Fat's, and told the Celestial that he had taken a billet at 'thirty bob' a week on a newspaper.
'Wha' paper?' inquired Sum Fat, who was squeezing a nasty-looking adipocerous mass into fish-balls for his boarders.
'The Trumpet-Call.'
'That's a lotten lag, if you li.' It close on banklupt this long time.'
Denison assented cheerfully. It was a rotten rag, he said, and undoubtedly in a weak position financially; but the thirty bob would pay his board bill.
Then Sum Fat, who knew that the ex-supercargo was lying as regarded the amount of his salary, nodded indifferently and went on pounding his awful hash.
'Where is Mr Pinkham?' asked Denison at eight p.m., when an exceedingly dirty small boy brought him his first proof.
'He's tanked.{*} An' he says he ain't agoin' to help no blackguard sailor feller to read no proofs. And most all the comps is tanked, too.'