The clang of the press came to an abrupt stop.
"Let's start a newspaper," he repeated. "We've got enough pica to print one page at a time."
Rashly Johnny agreed. All went well until it came time to print the sheet. Eighteen subscribers were secured at five cents a copy. Johnny and Bobby wrote the entire number between them. Bobby set it up, happily. Johnny, also happily, turned out certain letter-heads at the press. Then came time to print. And at that moment trouble began.
The first copy was legible but smudgy. Bobby was not satisfied and attempted improvement, most of which, so far from improving, gave cause for fresh defects. Johnny was standing about impatiently.
"Come on," said he at last, "that's good enough. They can read it, all right, and those few letters don't matter. Let it go at that."
But Bobby shook his head and carried the form back to the composing stone.
Four days he worked over the first page of the Weekly Eagle. Johnny expostulated, stormed, pleaded with tears in his eyes.
"Let's let the whole thing slide," he begged. "All we get out of it anyway is less'n a dollar and think of all the time we're wasting. That job for Mr. Fowler isn't all done, and Smith's Meat Market is going to order some bill-heads."
But Bobby was obstinate. Finally Johnny, in disgust, left him to his own devices.
The world for Bobby contained but one thing. His recollections of that time are of a flaring gas jet and the smell of printer's ink. He won finally and duly delivered the eighteen copies—letter-perfect. Probably five hundred other and imperfect examples of the Weekly Eagle found their way into the furnace.