ster looked tired and worried.
Supposing he fell ill at this supreme juncture! The whole enterprise
would be scotched, and not forty Daysons could keep it going! The master
was doing too much--law by day and journalism by night. They were
perhaps all doing too much, but the others did not matter. Nevertheless,
Mr. Cannon advanced to the table buoyant and faintly smiling,
straightening his shoulders back, proudly proving to himself and to them
that his individual force was inexhaustible. That straightening of the
shoulders always affected Hilda as something wistful, as almost pathetic
in its confident boyishness. It made her feel maternal and say to
herself (but not in words) with a sort of maternal superiority: "How
brave he is, poor thing!" Yes, in her heart she would apply the epithet
'poor thing' to this grand creature whose superiority she acknowledged
with more fervour than anybody. As for the undaunted straightening of
the shoulders, she adopted it, and after a time it grew to be a
characteristic gesture with her.

"Well?" Mr. Cannon greeted them.

"Well," said Arthur Dayson, with a factitious air of treating him as an
equal, "I've been round to Bennions and made it clear to him that if he
can't guarantee to run off a maximum of two thousand of an eight-page
sheet we shall have to try Clayhanger at Bursley, even if it's the last
minute."

"What did he say?"

"Grunted."

"I shall risk two thousand, any way."

"Paper delivered, governor?" Dayson asked in a low voice, leering
pawkily, as though to indicate that he was a man who could be trusted to
think of everything.

"Will be to-morrow, I think," said Mr. Cannon. "Got that letter ready,
Miss Lessways?"

Hilda sprang into life.

"Yes," she said, handing it diffidently. "But if you'd like me to do it
again--you see it's--"

"Plethora of H2O," Dayson put in, indulgent.

"Oh no!" Mr. Cannon decided. Having read the letter, he gave it to
Dayson. "It doesn't matter, but you ought to have signed it before it
was copied in the letter-book."

"Gemini! Miss!" murmured Dayson, glancing at Hilda with uplifted brows.

The fact was that both of them had forgotten this formality. Dayson took
a pen, and after describing a few flourishes in the air, about a quarter
of an inch above the level of the paper, he magnificently signed:
"Dayson & Co." Such was the title of the proprietorship. Just as Karkeek
was Mr. Cannon's dummy in the law, so was Dayson in the newspap