"What did he say to you? He seemed to be raising Cain." "No, he didn't say anything much. At least not much about the Dean's letter. He had that all right. He got talking to me about Krafft-Ebing." "Oh, was that all?" "No, there was more than that. I report down here for work on Monday." * * * * * "The trouble with him," said Rufus Twice, "is that he doesn't seem to understand that you've got to have a certain routine in a newspaper office. Deering tells me that he hardly ever gets in at one o'clock. Along about two he calls up on the phone and wants to get his assignment that way. And last night Warren says that he called up after ten and said, 'It's raining like hell. You don't really want me to go out and cover that story, do you?' Warren told him, 'Oh no, Mr. Neale. I didn't know it was raining. Of course, if this keeps up we won't get out any paper at all.'" Peter couldn't laugh because Twice was telling him of the reportorial shortcomings of Pat. He spoke to Pat about it when he got home to the apartment. The old flat in Sixty-sixth Street was again theirs. "But I get such lousy assignments," said Pat. "I think Deering's down on me. I suppose I've given him cause all right, but he's taking it out on me. He sends me where there isn't any chance of getting anything. If I do write something it never gets in the paper anyway. I did tell him it was raining. What was the use of my getting wet for nothing? They wanted me to go up to a meeting of the trustees of the Museum of Natural History. Now what could I get out of that?" "Didn't you go up?" said Peter aghast. "He was just being sarcastic when he told you there wouldn't be any paper if the rain kept up." "Oh, I know that. The Bulletin comes out every day all right. That's the trouble with it, but I took him up literally on what he said. I don't think the joke was on me. It was on him." "You shouldn't do things like that." "Suppose I had gone. There wouldn't have been any story anyway." "You've got to quit supposing. Let the city editor do that. The worst-looking assignment may turn out to be something if you go after it." "Yes, once in every twenty years those directors of the Museum of Natural History get into an awful row about whether to put the ichthyosaurus on the second floor or in the basement and if anything like that happened they'd turn over the whole front page to me." Peter shook his head gloomily. "You've got the wrong spirit. Even if your assignments are no good keep your eyes and your ears open when you go round the city and something will turn up. That's the way to show them. Bring in something you pick up yourself. Every day of the year there must be whole pagefuls of stuff just as good and better than the stuff we get in the paper. Only we don't find out about it. Keep scouting for stuff like that. When you say newspaper work's stupid you're practically saying that life's stupid."