Just as Erica was leaving Brian came in from his rounds, and they met at the door. Had he known her trouble and perplexity as to work, no power on earth could have induced him to keep silence any longer; but he knew nothing. She looked a little pale, but that was natural enough, and in her eyes he could see a peace which he had never seen there before. Then deep unselfish happiness filled his heart again, and Erica recognized in his greeting a great deal more than an ordinary by-stander would have seen. She went away feeling bettered by that handclasp. “That is a downright good man!” she thought to herself. “Perhaps by the time he's fifty-five, he'll be almost equal to his father.” CHAPTER XXII. An Editor Socrates How singular is the thing called pleasure, and how curiously related to pain, which might be thought to be the opposite; for they never come to a man together, and yet he who pursues either of them is generally compelled to take the other. They are two, and yet they grow together out of one head or stem; and I can not help thinking that, if Aesop had noticed them, he would have made a fable about God trying to reconcile their strife, and when he could not, he fastened their heads together; and this is the reason why when one comes the other follows. Plato That Erica should live any longer upon the money which her father chiefly made by the dissemination of views with which she disagreed was clearly impossible, at least impossible to one of her sincere and thorough nature. But to find work was very difficult, indeed. After an anxious waiting and searching, she was one day surprised by receiving through Charles Osmond's friend, Mr. Crutchley, an introduction to the editor of a well-known and widely read paper. Every one congratulated her, but she could not feel very hopeful, it seemed too good to prove true it was, in fact, so exactly the position which she would herself have chosen that it seemed unlikely it should ever really be hers. Still of course she hoped, and arrangements were made for an interview with Mr. Bircham, editor and part proprietor of the “Daily Review.” Accordingly, one hot summer morning Erica dressed herself carefully, tried to look old and serious, and set off with Tom to the city. “I'll see you safe to the door of the lion's den,” said Tom as they made their way along the crowded streets. “I only wish I could be under the table during the interview; I should like to see you doing the dignified journalist.” “I wouldn't have you for the world!” said Erica, laughing. Then, growing grave again, “Oh, Tom! How I wish it were over! It's worse than three hundred visits to a dentist rolled into one.” “Appalling prospect!” said Tom. “I can exactly picture what it will be. BIRCHAM! Such a forbidding name for an editor. He'll be a sort of editorial Mr. Squeers; he'll talk in a loud, blustering way, and you'll feel exactly like a journalistic Smike.”