The Gentleman from Indiana - Page 123/212

"We must remember, too," said his companion, thoughtfully, "there is the

Thursday issue of this week to be prepared, almost at once."

"Don't! Please don't mention that, Fisbee!" Parker tilted far back in

his chair with his feet anchored under the desk, preserving a precarious

balance. "I ain't as grateful for my promotion to joint Editor-in-Chief as

I might be. I'm a middling poor man for the hour, I guess," he remarked,

painfully following the peregrinations of a fly on his companion's sleeve.

Mr. Fisbee twisted up another sheet, and employed his eyes in following

the course of a crack in the plaster, a slender black aperture which

staggered across the dusty ceiling and down the dustier wall to disappear

behind a still dustier map of Carlow County. "That's the trouble!"

exclaimed Parker, observing the other's preoccupation. "Soon as you get to

writing a line or two that seems kind of promising, you begin to take a

morbid interest in that blamed crack. It's busted up enough copy for me,

the last eight days, to have filled her up twenty times over. I don't know

as I ever care to see that crack again. I turned my back on it, but there

wasn't any use in that, because if a fly lights on you I watch him like a

brother, and if there ain't any fly I've caught a mania for tapping my

teeth with a pencil, that is just as good."

To these two gentlemen, thus disengaged, reentered (after a much longer

absence than Miss Selina's quatrain justified) Mr. Ross Schofield, a

healthy glow of exertion lending pleasant color to his earnest visage, and

an almost visible laurel of success crowning his brows. In addition to

this imaginary ornament, he was horned with pencils over both ears, and

held some scribbled sheets in his hand.

"I done a good deal down there," he announced cheerfully, drawing up a

chair to the desk. "I thought up a heap of things I've heard lately, and

they'll fill up mighty well. That there poem of Miss Seliny's was a kind

of an inspiration to me, and I tried one myself, and it didn't come hard

at all. When I got started once, it jest seemed to flow from me. I didn't

set none of it up," he added modestly, but with evident consciousness of

having unearthed genius in himself and an elate foreknowledge of the treat

in store for his companions. "I thought I'd ort to see how you liked it

first." He offered the papers to Mr. Parker, but the foreman shook his

head.