But go on with your work.

Don't mind me." Thus admonished, the editor again bent over his desk, and his friend softly took up his suspended song.

The editor had not proceeded far in his corrections when Jack's voice again broke the silence.
"Where are those d----d verses, anyway ?" Without looking up, the editor waved his pencil towards an uncut copy of the "Excelsior Magazine" lying on the table.
"You don't suppose I'm going to READ them, do you ?" said Jack, aggrievedly.

"Why don't you say what they're about?
That's your business as editor." But that functionary, now wholly lost and wandering in the non-sequitur of an involved passage in the proof before him, only waved an impatient remonstrance with his pencil and knit his brows.

Jack, with a sigh, took up the magazine.
A long silence followed, broken only by the hurried rustling of sheets of copy and an occasional exasperated start from the editor.