'He was very pleasant,' said Rob.
'Yes,' said Billy Kirker thoughtfully, 'there's nothing George Frederick wouldn't do for any one if it could be done gratis.'
'And he struck me as an enterprising sort of man.'
'"Enterprise without outlay" is the motto of this office,' said the chief.
'But the paper seems to be well conducted,' said Rob, a little crestfallen.
'The worst conducted in England,' said Kirker cheerfully.
Rob asked how the Mirror compared with the Argus.
'They have six reporters to our three,' said Kirker, 'but we do double work and beat them.'
'I suppose there is a great deal of rivalry between the staffs of the two papers?' Rob asked, for he had read of such things.
'Oh no,' said Kirker, 'we help each other. For instance, if Daddy Walsh, the Argus chief, is drunk, I help him; and if I'm drunk, he helps me. I'm going down to the Frying Pan to see him now.'
'The Frying Pan?' echoed Rob.
'It's a literary club,' Kirker explained, 'and very exclusive. If you come with me I'll introduce you.'
Rob was somewhat taken aback at what he had heard, but he wanted to be on good terms with his fellow-workers.
'Not to-night,' he said. 'I think I'd better be getting home now.'
Kirker lit another cigarette, and saying he would expect Rob at the office next morning, strolled off. The new reporter was undecided whether to follow him at once, or to wait for Mr. Licquorish's reappearance. He was looking round the office curiously, when the door opened and Kirker put his head in.
'By the bye, old chap,' he said, 'could you lend me five bob?'
'Yes, yes,' said the new reporter.
He had to undo the string of his money-bag, but the chief was too fine a gentleman to smile.
'Thanks, old man,' Kirker said carelessly, and again withdrew.
The door of the editor's room was open as Rob passed.
'Ah, Mr. Angus,' said Mr. Licquorish, 'here are a number of books for review; you might do a short notice of some of them.'
He handed Rob the two works that happened to lie uppermost, and the new reporter slipped them into his pockets with a certain elation. The night was dark and wet, but he lit his pipe and hurried up the muddy streets to the single room that was now his home. Probably his were the only lodgings in his street that had not the portrait of a young lady on the mantelpiece. On his way he passed three noisy young men. They were Kirker and two reporters on the Argus trying which could fling his hat highest in the rain.
Sitting in his lonely room Rob examined his books with interest. One of them was Tennyson's new volume of poems, and a month afterwards the poet laureate's publishers made Rob march up the streets of Silchester with his chest well forward by advertising 'The Silchester Mirror says, "This admirable volume."' After all, the great delight of being on the Press is that you can patronise the Tennysons. Doubtless the poet laureate got a marked copy of Rob's first review forwarded him, and had an anxious moment till he saw that it was favourable. There had been a time when even John Milton felt a thrill pass through him as he saw Messrs. Besant and Rice boasting that he thought their Chaplain of the Fleet a novel of sustained interest, 'which we have read without fatigue.'
Rob sat over his empty grate far on into the night, his mind in a jumble. As he grew more composed the Mirror and its staff sank out of sight, and he was carrying a dead child in his arms along the leafy Whunny road. His mouth twitched, and his head drooped. He was preparing to go to bed when he sat down again to look at the other book. It was a novel by 'M.' in one thin volume, and Rob thought the title, The Scorn of Scorns, foolish. He meant to write an honest criticism of it, but never having reviewed a book before, he rather hoped that this would be a poor one, which he could condemn brilliantly. Poor Rob! he came to think more of that book by and by.
At last Rob wound up the big watch that neighbours had come to gaze at when his father bought it of a pedlar forty years before, and took off the old silver chain that he wore round his neck. He went down on his knees to say his prayers, and then, remembering that he had said them already, rose up and went to bed.
CHAPTER IV
'THE SCORN OF SCORNS'
St. Leonard's Lodge is the residence of Mr. William Meredith, an ex-mayor of Silchester, and stands in the fashionable suburb of the town. There was at one time considerable intercourse between this house and Dome Castle, the seat of Colonel Abinger, though they are five miles apart and in different counties; and one day, after Rob had been on the Press for a few months, two boys set out from the castle to show themselves to Nell Meredith. They could have reached the high road by a private walk between a beech and an ivy hedge, but they preferred to climb down a steep path to the wild-running Dome. The advantage of this route was that they risked their necks by taking it.
Nell, who did not expect visitors, was sitting by the fire in her boudoir dreaming. It was the room in which she and Mary Abinger had often discussed such great questions as Woman, her Aims, her Influence; Man, his Instability, his Weakness, his Degeneration; the Poor, how are we to Help them; why Lady Lucy Gilding wears Pink when Blue is obviously her Colour.
Nell was tucked away in a soft arm-chair, in which her father never saw her without wondering that such a little thing should require eighteen yards for a dress.
'I'm not so little,' she would say on these occasions, and then Mr. Meredith chuckled, for he knew that there were young men who considered his Nell tall and terrible. He liked to watch her sweeping through a room. To him the boudoir was a sea of reefs. Nell's dignity when she was introduced to a young gentleman was another thing her father could never look upon without awe, but he also noticed that it soon wore off.
On the mantelpiece lay a comb and several hairpins. There are few more mysterious things than hairpins. So far back as we can go into the past we see woman putting up her hair. It is said that married men lose their awe of hairpins and clean their pipes with them.
A pair of curling-tongs had a chair to themselves near Nell, and she wore a short blue dressing-jacket. Probably when she woke from her reverie she meant to do something to her brown hair. When old gentlemen called at the Lodge they frequently told their host that he had a very pretty daughter; when younger gentlemen called they generally called again, and if Nell thought they admired her the first time she spared no pains to make them admire her still more the next time. This was to make them respect their own judgment.
It was little Will Abinger who had set Nell a-dreaming, for from wondering if he was home yet for the Christmas holidays her thoughts wandered to his sister Mary, and then to his brother Dick. She thought longer of Dick in his lonely London chambers than of the others, and by and by she was saying to herself petulantly, 'I wish people wouldn't go dying and leaving me money.' Mr. Meredith, and still more Mrs. Meredith, thought that their only daughter, an heiress, would be thrown away on Richard Abinger, barrister-at-law, whose blood was much bluer than theirs, but who was, nevertheless, understood to be as hard-up as his father.
The door-bell rang, and two callers were ushered into the drawing-room without Nell's knowing it. One of them left his companion to talk to Mrs. Meredith, and clattered upstairs in search of the daughter of the house. He was a bright-faced boy of thirteen, with a passion for flinging stones, and, of late, he had worn his head in the air, not because he was conceited, but that he might look with admiration upon the face of the young gentleman downstairs.
Bouncing into the parlour, he caught sight of the object of his search before she could turn her head.