“Where are your machines?”

“There,” said Gluck, pointing.

“That hand-press!” cried Raphael, astonished.  “Do you mean to say you print them all with your own hand?”

“Why not?” said the dauntless Gluck.  “I shall wrap them up for the post, too.”  And he shut himself up with the last of the “copy.”

Raphael having exhausted his interest in the half-paper, fell to striding about the little shop, when who should come in but Pinchas, smoking a cigar of the Schlesinger brand.

“Ah, my Prince of Redacteurs,” said Pinchas, darting at Raphael’s hand and kissing it.  “Did I not say you vould produce the finest paper in the kingdom?  But vy have I not my copy by post?  You must not listen to Ebenezer ven he says I must not be on the free list, the blackguard.”

Raphael explained to the incredulous poet that Ebenezer had not said anything of the kind.  Suddenly Pinchas’s eye caught sight of the sheets.  He swooped down upon them like a hawk.  Then he uttered a shriek of grief.

“Vere’s my poem, my great poesie?”

Raphael looked embarrassed.

“This is only half the paper,” he said evasively.

“Ha, then it vill appear in the other half, hein?” he said with hope tempered by a terrible suspicion.

“N—­n—­o,” stammered Raphael timidly.

“No?” shrieked Pinchas.

“You see—­the—­fact is, it wouldn’t scan.  Your Hebrew poetry is perfect, but English poetry is made rather differently and I’ve been too busy to correct it.”

“But it is exactly like Lord Byron’s!” shrieked Pinchas.  “Mein Gott!  All night I lie avake—­vaiting for the post.  At eight o’clock the post comes—­but The Flag of Judah she vaves not!  I rush round here—­and now my beautiful poem vill not appear.”  He seized the sheet again, then cried fiercely:  “You have a tale, ‘The Waters of Babylon,’ by Ebenezer the fool-boy, but my poesie have you not. Gott in Himmel!” He tore the sheet frantically across and rushed from the shop.  In five minutes he reappeared.  Raphael was absorbed in reading the last proof.  Pinchas plucked timidly at his coat-tails.

“You vill put it in next veek?” he said winningly.

“I dare say,” said Raphael gently.

“Ah, promise me.  I vill love you like a brother, I vill be grateful to you for ever and ever.  I vill never ask another favor of you in all my life.  Ve are already like brothers—­hein?  I and you, the only two men—­”

“Yes, yes,” interrupted Raphael, “it shall appear next week.”

“God bless you!” said Pinchas, kissing Raphael’s coat-tails passionately and rushing without.

Looking up accidentally some minutes afterwards, Raphael was astonished to see the poet’s carneying head thrust through the half-open door with a finger laid insinuatingly on the side of the nose.  The head was fixed there as if petrified, waiting to catch the editor’s eye.