Shut the door after you." The sub-editor's room--or rooms, for there was an inner and an outer sanctum--was in a remote dark corner of the building, so dark that gas was generally burning in it all day long, giving its occupants generally the washed-out pallid appearance of men who do not know when day ends or night begins.

The chief sub-editor was a young, bald-headed, spectacled man of meek appearance, who received Horace in a resigned way, and referred him to the clerks in the outer room, who would show him how he could make himself useful.
Feeling that, so far as he was concerned, he had fallen on his feet, and secretly wishing poor Reginald was in his shoes, Horace obeyed and retired to the outer room.
The occupants of that apartment were two young gentlemen of from eighteen to twenty years of age, who, it was evident at a glance, were not brothers.

One was short and fair and chubby, the other was lank and lean and cadaverous; one was sorrowful and lugubrious in countenance; the other seemed to be spending his time in trying hard not to smile, and not succeeding.

The only thing they did appear to share in common was hard work, and in this they were so fully engrossed that Horace had to stand a full minute at the table before they had leisure to look up and notice him.
"The gentleman in there," said Horace, addressing the lugubrious youth as being the more imposing of the two, "said if I came to you you could set me to work." The sad one gave a sort of groan and said,-- "Ah, he was right there.

It _is_ work." "I say," said the other youth, looking up, "don't frighten the kid, Booms; you'll make him run away." "I wish _I_ could run away," said Booms, in an audible soliloquy.
"So you can if you like, you old crocodile.