Drake joined in the discussion, and the chatter that came from this
enormous man was as small as his head, which sat like a pin's-head
above his shoulders. Platt drifted from the obscene into the
incomprehensible. The room was fast emptying, and the waiter
loitered, waiting to be paid.

"We must be getting off," said Mike; "it is nearly eleven o'clock,
and we have still the best part of the paper to read through."

"Don't be in such a damned hurry," said Frank, authoritatively.

Harding bade them good-night at the door, and the editors walked down
Fleet Street. To pass up a rickety court to the printer's, or to go
through the stage-door to the stage, produced similar sensations
in Mike. The white-washed wall, the glare of the raw gas, the low
monotonous voice of the reading-boy, like one studying a part, or
perhaps like the murmur of the distant audience; the boy coming in
asking for "copy" or proof, like the call-boy, with his "Curtain's
going up, gentlemen." Is there not analogy between the preparation
of the paper that will be before the public in the morning, and the
preparation of the play that will be before its eyes in the evening?

From the glass closet where they waited for the "pages," they could
see the compositors bending over the forms. The light lay upon a red
beard, a freckled neck, the crimson of the volutes of an ear.

In the glass closet there were three wooden chairs, a table, and an
inkstand; on the shelf by the door a few books--the _London
Directory_, an _English Dictionary_, a _French Dictionary_--the