door struggling into their coats. They had their hats on the backs of their heads, and they lit cigarettes as they paused.
“I couldn’t quite finish that sporting copy, Miss Carr,” said Ryder. “I’ll come back to do it. I don’t like to keep my wife waiting for dinner.”
“Thanks, Mr. Ryder. But I don’t like to have you come back for that. Perhaps I can manage it.”
“Not at all. I’ll be glad to come back.”
“I’ll be back for a couple of hours, Miss Carr,” said Johnson.
“All right, thanks, good-night.”
Miss Hands and the men went out together. Valerie stretched herself. “What a wonderful thing work is. It puts such colour into people,” she thought.
It was Thursday evening of the last week in March. Bob had been away since the previous Saturday going over part of the electorate with Roger Benton, and Valerie was running the paper herself. Bob had left leaders ready for the Monday and the Wednesday. Valerie said she could manage one for Friday. She had her books all up to date now, could edit the telegrams and cablegrams, and was more than equal to the reporting and paragraphing and editorial work. It was not the paper or the bookkeeping that troubled her so much as the drudgery of the proof-reading on the jobbing.
Most New Zealand newspapers have their own general printing plants, and the News committee expected in time to have the expenses paid by the jobbing work of the river towns. There was only one way to beat the Auckland presses at this business, and that was to do it cheaper and faster than they could. Valerie took little interest in the bill-heads and circulars and letter-heads and show schedules, and what interest she did take was centred in John-
