MR EDWARD NUTT, the industrious editor of the Daily Reformer,
sat at his desk, opening letters and marking proofs to the merry tune of a
typewriter, worked by a vigorous young lady.
He was a stoutish, fair man, in his shirt-sleeves; his movements were
resolute, his mouth firm and his tones final; but his round, rather babyish
blue eyes had a bewildered and even wistful look that rather contradicted
all this. Nor indeed was the expression altogether misleading. It might
truly be said of him, as for many journalists in authority, that his most
familiar emotion was one of continuous fear; fear of libel actions, fear of
lost advertisements, fear of misprints, fear of the sack.
His life was a series of distracted compromises between the
proprietor of the paper (and of him), who was a senile soap-boiler with
three ineradicable mistakes in his mind, and the very able staff he had
collected to run the paper; some of whom were brilliant and experienced
men and (what was even worse) sincere enthusiasts for the political policy
of the paper.
A letter from one of these lay immediately before him, and rapid and
resolute as he was, he seemed almost to hesitate before opening it. He took
up a strip of proof instead, ran down it with a blue eye, and a blue pencil,
altered the word "adultery" to the word "impropriety," and the word "Jew"
to the word "Alien," rang a bell and sent it flying upstairs.
Then, with a more thoughtful eye, he ripped open the letter from his
more distinguished contributor, which bore a postmark of Devonshire, and
read as follows:
DEAR NUTT,--As I see you're working Spooks and Dooks at the
same time, what about an article on that rum business of the Eyres of
Exmoor; or as the old women call it down here, the Devil's Ear of Eyre?
The head of the family, you know, is the Duke of Exmoor; he is one of the
few really stiff old Tory aristocrats left, a sound old crusted tyrant it is
quite in our line to make trouble about. And I think I'm on the track of a |
