The office of Mr. Springthorpe's journal was situated up a flight of narrow stairs, the shop on the street front having been let to a pork-butcher for the sake of the rent. On the first floor were the editor's room, the reporters' room, and another small apartment that served as the general office, and contained a staff of one weedy young man with downy side-whiskers, and a perky little office boy. Up a further crazy stair the composing-room was reached, and here five men and several boys put into type what was sent from the rooms below. The printing was done in premises on the ground floor behind the pork-butcher's, extended by the addition of a rather rickety wooden outbuilding. By no means an establishment to impress a visitor with the importance of the journal here produced, or to give a beginner any exaggerated idea of the dignity of journalism. Still, the massive gilt letters proclaiming THE GUARDIAN above the pork-butcher's had the power to make Henry's blood tingle when first he saw them. Up the stair he followed his father, with much fluttering of the heart, but reassured by the confident and cheerful look on the face of Edward John, who went about the business as outwardly calm as if he were buying a fresh stock of stationery. The office-boy showed the visitors into a room to the left of the counter, on the door of which the pregnant word EDITOR, printed in bold letters on a slip of paper, had been pasted but recently, judging by its cleanness, as contrasted with the soiled appearance of everything else. The editor's room was plainly furnished, not to say shabbily, despite the fact that it figured frequently in the _Guardian_ gossip columns under the attractive title of "The Sanctum." In the middle of the floor stood a large writing-table, from which the leather covering had peeled off, exposing the wood beneath like a plane tree with its bark half-shed. On the table lay, in picturesque confusion, bundles of galley-slips, clippings from newspapers, sheets of "copy" paper, all partially secured in their positions by small slabs of lead as paper-weights. The waste-paper basket to the left of the table had overflowed, and the floor around was strewn with cut newspapers and crumpled sheets of manuscript. On the walls hung two large maps, one showing the railways of England and the other the Midland counties. Above the fireplace a printer's calendar was nailed. Three soiled and battered haircloth chairs completed the furniture of the room when we have added a damaged arm-chair, cushioned with a pile of old papers. This was the editor's chair. Its intrinsic value was probably half-a-crown, but to the regular readers of the _Guardian_ it must have seemed as priceless as the gold stool of Ashanti, for they were accustomed to read two columns every week headed "From the Editor's Chair."