"Poor Kenneth!" Wratten remarked to Quain, as they followed Grame to the carriage. "He really feels this quite keenly. He realizes the immensity of the tragedy to which we're going to travel. It's a mistake. It hampers one."
"I should have thought it would make you do better work," Quain answered, "if you really felt the tremendous grief of it all."
"Not a bit. It makes you maudlin. You lose your head and go slobbering sentimental stuff about. Remember, you're no one--you don't exist--you're just a reporter who's got to hustle round, find out what's happened, and tell people how it happened. Never mind how it strikes you--_The Day_ ain't interested in you and your sensations--it wants the story of the mine disaster."
Wratten turned on him savagely. "Oh! Good God! don't you think _I_ feel it too? Don't you think I hate the idea of never being able to write it as I see it? By God! I wouldn't dare tell the story of a mine disaster as I see it. _The Day_ would never print it--it would be rank socialism."
There were five other reporters in the carriage. Two of them Humphrey had met before: Mainham, who wore pince-nez, looked like a medical student, and spent every Saturday at the Zoological Garden, where he discovered extraordinary stories of crocodiles, who suffered from measles; he was, in a way, the registrar of births, deaths and marriages among the animals; and Chander, a thin-faced, thin-lipped young man, who wore long hair, whose conversation was entirely made up of a long chain of funny stories.
Chander faced the little tragedies of his work daily, but he kept himself eternally young by pretending only to see the humorous side of things. For instance, he once spent a whole morning in the rain and slush of a January, trying to verify some story. He tramped the dismal pavements of a dirty street off Tottenham Court Road, in search of a certain man in a certain house, finally gave it up in disgust, and discovered that he should have gone to another street of the same name by King's Cross. That would have disheartened the average man: but Chander turned it into a funny story--it is good to have the Chander point of view.
The other reporters were Thomas, who worked for _The Courier_--a penny paper--a well-ordered, methodical, unimaginative man, who had a secret pity for the poor devils who had to work for halfpenny papers; and a big broad-shouldered man, whose name was Gully. His face at a glance seemed handsome enough, until you noticed the narrow eyes and the coarseness of the heavy under lip. He had brought a pack of cards with him and wanted to play nap.