Somebody chuckled and said. "Get a basket," but High-Pockets knew it wasn't meant for him and nobly disdained a reply. He was muttering to himself, "I've heard these machines called a lot of things in my time, but this is the first one I ever saw that could justifiably be called a Republican."
The machinist was verbose, a little on the vicariously obscene side. High-Pockets helped him pick the mats off the floor, but it was almost an hour before they got the machine going again.
When they did, High-Pockets went back to look at the slip-board. He studied it for a few minutes with a queer look on his face, then started for the chairman. But halfway there, he changed his mind. No machine had ever got the best of him before, and he'd been up against some tough ones. He was a barnstormer, wasn't he?
So he went back to the battle. But now there wasn't any copy, so he wandered around with that queer look on his face, and finally wound up in the locker room where he decided he might as well kill the pint. He smoked a cigarette and stuck his head out of the window into the fresh air.
When the pint was thoroughly defunct he returned. The machine was quiet again, but the stick was half full. He didn't even look at it. There wasn't any copy, but he took the type to the dump.
The next take was copy for "Good Morning, Glory," the paper's star columnist. That seemed to go very well. No. 7 perhaps couldn't quite make out what was happening. Well, that was nothing. Most columnists were like that.
Then again there wasn't any copy. A young fellow came down from the newsroom and spoke to the copy-cutter. "There'll be a story down for the eleven-fifteen edition," he said. "'Two Women Murdered.' About a column."
The copy-cutter looked at the clock. "It's eleven o'clock now," he said. "Where is it?"
"Just starting to write it upstairs. We'll get it down as fast as we can."