in the tiled waiting-room. Sleepily a negress slopped water on the tiles, with languid sullen movement pushing a gray sopping rag around the floor.
It was now five-thirty. Ben had gone out of the house into the orchard at three twenty-five. In another forty minutes Gant would waken, dress, and build the morning fires.
“Ben,” said Harry Tugman, as they walked out of the relaxed office, “if Jimmy Dean comes messing around my press-room again they can get some one else to print their lousy sheet. What the hell! I can get a job on the Atlanta Constitution whenever I want it.”
“Did he come down to-night?” asked Ben.
“Yes,” said Harry Tugman, “and he got out again. I told him to take his little tail upstairs.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” said Ben. “What did he say?”
“He said,’I'M the editor! I’m the editor of this paper!’'I don’t give a good goddam,’I said,’if you’re the President’s snotrag. If you want any paper to-day keep out of the pressroom.’And believe me, he went!”
In cool blue-pearl darkness they rounded the end of the Post Office and cut diagonally across the street to Uneeda Lunch No. 3. It was a small beanery, twelve feet wide, wedged in between an optician’s and a Greek shoe parlor.
Within, Dr. Hugh McGuire sat on a stool patiently impaling kidney beans, one at a time, upon the prongs of his fork. A strong odor of corn whisky soaked the air about him. His thick skilful butcher’s hands, hairy on the backs, gripped the fork numbly. His heavy-jowled face was blotted by large brown patches. He turned round and stared owlishly as Ben entered, fixing the wavering glare of his bulbous red eyes finally upon him.
“Hello, son,” he said in his barking kindly voice, “what can I do for you?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Ben laughing contemptuously, and jerking his head toward Tugman. “Listen to this, won’t you?”
