The other, the editor’s son, Oliver Baddlesmere, had come to the office to complete establishment straight out of the schoolroom some months back. He had been brought in to reduce the pressure of clerking work, and, owing to extreme youth and inexperience, had been given the simpler duties to perform, so that he came naturally and as a matter of course to preside over the destinies of the poet’s corner and to impart information to a hungry world from the battered volumes of an encyclopædia, and suchlike heavy books of reference, the weight of which, in the intervals of airily relieving the world’s thirst for knowledge, the boy used for the purpose of pressing prints--of which he was gathering a collection from the illustrated papers of the day, pasting them into brown paper scrap-books of his own making. Netherby Gomme had scarcely got under fair way with the writing of his amorous matter when the boy whipped round on his office-stool. “I say, Netherby,” said he; “your book _is_ making a splash all along the Thames. The bookstalls are covered with it--the whole blessed town is saffron with it.” The yellow-haired youth smiled complacently; sitting back in his chair, he nodded: “Indeed?” he said. Noll slipped down off the stool, took it up, and carried it over to the fireplace: “You were a chunk-head not to put your name to it!” he said. “But all the same, you know, it’s been roaring funny to hear the father and mother talk about it.” He vaulted to the top of the high stool, scrambled on to his feet, and, reaching up, opened the glass face of the clock: “It almost bursts me sometimes that I can’t tell ’em you wrote it,” he said. He got on tip-toe and put forward the large hand twenty minutes, shut the face with a click, turned where he stood, and, thrusting his hands into his trouser-pockets, he added confidentially: “D’you know, Netherby, between you and me and the office ink-pot, I never thought myself that you could be so uncommon funny.” The yellow-haired youth blushed. Clambering down off the stool, Noll carried it back to his desk, took down a tall silk hat, ran his coat-sleeve round it, and put it on his head. Netherby Gomme coughed: “Oliver,” said he--hesitated--made a pause--then added nervously: “Oliver, I am going to confide in you. In fact, if I don’t I shall get some sort of low malarial fever. Now, don’t treat the confidence with the giggle of childishness.” Noll sighed. He turned, leaped on to his office-stool, swung round, set his feet on the bar, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his palms, and, peering at the other out of the shadow from under the brim of his hat, said gloomily: “O lor! the little typewriter girl!... Why the dickens you don’t kiss Julia and have done with it, Netherby, I can’t make out. Hang it, _I_ have!... It was very nice whilst it lasted, and all that, but there was nothing in it to write poetry about!” Netherby Gomme flushed.