Mr. Knewbit shouted in a violent hurry:
"In with you! Cat and all! Don't apologize! Miss Ling adores 'em! Three in the house already—waste bits left on the dustbin for needy strangers. Don't forget! 288 Great Coram Street, Russell Square. Drive on, cabby!"
He added, dancing up and down excitedly on the pavement, as the jingling four-wheeler rolled on, with the pair of castaways:
"Lord! if I only had the setting up of that young fellow's story, how I would give it 'em in leaded capitals!"
He closed his eyes in ecstasy and saw, in large black letters standing out across the clear horizon of the new day to which London was waking:
LONDON DRAMA.
BEGGARED HEIR TO WEALTH
ROBBED.
CAST ON THE STREETS!
SOLE COMPANION A KITTEN!
PATHETIC STORY.
"Not that I know he is the heir to wealth, but it looks well, uncommon! Uncommon well, it looks!" said Mr. Knewbit.
XV
When the Editorial Staff of the Early Wire had gone home, or to the Club, by cab or private brougham or on foot, in the blackest hours of the night or the smallest hours of the morning; when the Printing Staff had filed out, pale and respectably attired, or thundered down the iron-shod staircases in grimy, inky, oily déshabillé, then the Publishing Staff trooped in and took possession. And, as the lines of carts backed up to the curb, and were filled by brawny shirt-sleeved men, who tossed the huge bales of newspapers from hand to hand with the nonchalant skill of jugglers doing tricks with willow-pattern plates and oranges, the Business Department began to empty so much that you could see the eyebrows of clerks behind the iron-nailed unplaned deal counters; and Mr. Knewbit, slackening in his terrific energy, would cease keeping count, and tallying, and writing cabalistic signs on huge packages with the stump of blue pencil that never was used up. And he would mop his face and say—in the same invariable formula: