Henry always came in between half-past eleven and twelve Saturdays to clip his contributions from the paper and paste them, end to end, in a 'string.' Then Humphrey would measure the string with a two-foot rule and fill out an order on the Voice Company for payment at the rate of a dollar and a quarter a column, or something less than seven cents an inch. Henry despairing of a raise from nine dollars a week had, months back, elected to work 'on space.'
That the result had not been altogether happy—he was averaging something less than nine dollars a week now—does not concern us here.
Humphrey contrived to keep busy until the string was made and measured; then proposed lunch.
At Stanley's, the food ordered, he leaned on his lank elbows and surveyed the dejected young man before him.
'Hen,' he remarked dryly, 'do you really think Anne Mayer Stelton's voice has a velvet suavity?'
Henry glanced up from his barley soup, coloured perceptibly, then dropped his eyes and consumed several spoonfuls of the tepid fluid.
'Why not?' said he.
'You feel, do you, that her art has deepened and broadened appreciably since she last appeared in Sunbury?'
Henry centred all his attention on the soup.
'You feel that she has really added a superstructure of technique during her study abroad?'