"Yes, your honor." High-Pockets mumbled, but he was thinking of other things. He had been sentenced to work at his trade. That meant contact with proofreaders, and High-Pockets bristled. But the bristling subsided rapidly, as High-Pockets, simulating a grateful smile from long habit, realized with a sickly feeling that for perhaps the first time in his long career, a proofreader had had the complete and final word, and High-Pockets did not dare to answer back....
They spotted High-Pockets coming across the composing-room of the Daily News when they saw a red nose following an eccentric orbit up among the fluorescent lights. High-Pockets didn't exactly duck the lights. When he came face to face with one, his incredibly tall knees limbered up and he sort of weaved under it.
The union chairman met him with a handshake. "High-Pockets Jones," he said, grinning, "Dean of Barnstormers and Wizard of the Linotype. I know you from your picture. Can you really make a linotype stand up on its hind legs and talk?"
"Well," High-Pockets said in a modest, booming voice, "I will admit that's one of my more difficult stunts."
The chairman guffawed, and they steered High-Pockets to the slip-board. "I can put you on a week's stretch."
High-Pockets stopped as if he had walked into a brick wall. "No!" he boomed. "Can't do it! Haven't worked five days straight in twenty years."
"But look, High-Pockets. Look at it this way. You're an old-time barnstormer, aren't you?"
High-Pockets winced.
"Well," the chairman said diplomatically, "there's not as much call for barnstormers as there used to be, but—" he said it quickly—"here's a new field. It needs a good barnstormer as much as they ever did."