But Chaytor, as usual, put a good face on the affair. I think he was genuinely glad. The City fogs hurt his chest, he said; and was a man a slave or a schoolboy, that he should mount the same confounded office stool every morning, year in and year out!
“They only give us a fortnight’s holiday,” he added, “and then it is always wet. Find me the City clerk who has ever had a fine fortnight for his annual holiday!”
Minnie cried out savagely, “Stuff and nonsense!”
She asked him where he expected to find thirty-five pounds a year rent and a pound a week housekeeping, to say nothing of extras such as clothes.
“Easily enough,” Chaytor cried airily. “I’m going in for journalism.”
And then it began—the long, heart-breaking struggle—with a shrew at his elbow thrown in. He used to sit at the window and wait for the last post every evening. He watched the postman cross the square and fumble at his bag.
“That article is sure to be accepted,” he would call into the room to Minnie. “Here is the check coming upstairs. We’ll go down to your home for a little holiday.”
But the check never came. It was always a long envelope addressed in his own handwriting and containing his “copy” and the diabolically polite regrets of the editor. Poor old Chaytor!
Minnie carefully cleaned and oiled her typewriter and put an advertisement in a literary paper for copying work—quoting a penny a thousand less than the other advertisers.
The quick clinkety-clank of the typewriter tortured Chaytor; he hated machinery. He said mournfully that the world was rapidly becoming machine-made. Of course Minnie asked acidly, “where would he be if it were not for machines?”