No, he would never see that second fifty pounds. And, so thinking, he sighed.
“Hullo, what’s up?” asked a colleague who sat near him. “Got the hump or something?”
“Oh, shut it!” Hopford snapped. “I’m dog tired.”
“For that matter so am I, but I don’t groan over it,” his neighbor rapped back. “And yet I well might, after reporting two inquests and a cremation in one afternoon.”
Hopford laughed.
“Never mind,” he said. “Yesterday you attended two parades of mannequins, one in swimming suits. You told me so yourself, so you haven’t much to grumble at.”
For some minutes both went on writing, turning out their “copy” at a great pace.
“Odd thing this suicide—what?” Hopford’s friend remarked as he laid down his fountain pen at last and pinned his sheets of copy together.
“What suicide?” Hopford inquired, while his pen ran swiftly on.
“You haven’t heard? Everybody is talking about it in the clubs, though none of the evening papers has the story. I got details at the Junior Carlton, where I dined to-night. Lord Froissart belongs there.”