The little booksellers of the Strand, in their death struggle against Rickman's, never cursed that house more heartily than did the Junior Journalists, in their friendly, shabby little den, smelling of old leather and tobacco and the town.

They complained that it cut on two-thirds of the light from the front windows of the reading-room.
Not that any of them were ever known to read in it.

They used it chiefly as a place to talk in, for which purpose little illumination was required.
To-night one of the windows in question was occupied by a small group of talkers isolated from the rest.

There was Mackinnon, of _The Literary Observer_.

There were the three wild young spirits of _The Planet_, Stables, who had launched it with frightful impetus into space (having borrowed a sum sufficient for the purpose), Maddox, who controlled its course, and Rankin, whose brilliance made it twinkle so brightly in the firmament.