Now the burn seemed to smart behind his eyes.

Thirty years and more a master of his craft. The quickest, most accurate of proofreaders and correctors in the whole city, perhaps in the province. Working every night, and through the night. So that the legal records, deeds of sale, notifications of public finance, contracts, quotations on the bourse, would appear in the morning, flawless, exact to the decimal point. He had no rival in the arts of scruple. They gave him the smallest print to check, the longest columns of figures to justify, the interminable catalogues of lost and found objects to be auctioned for the post office and public transport. His proofreadings of the biannual telephone directory, of electoral and census rolls, of municipal minutes, were legend. Printing works, the public record office, the courts of law vied for his labours.

But now the sensation of burning, just behind his eyes, felt sharper.