The receiver produced, in some occult manner, the manner of not being precisely pleased with this. "You don't seem much disappointed," it said.

"I'm stricken but philosophical. Don't you see me, pierced to the heart, but--"

"Ban," interrupted the instrument: "you're flippant. Have you been drinking?"

"No. Nor eating either, now that you remind me."

"Has something happened?"

"Something is always happening in this restless world."

"It has. And you want to tell me about it."

"No. I just want to forget it, in your company."

"Is it a decent night out?"

"Most respectable."

"Then you may come and walk me home. I think the air will do me good."

"It's very light diet, though," observed Banneker.

"Oh, very well," responded the telephone in tones of patient resignation. "I'll watch you eat. Good-bye."

Seated at a quiet table in the restaurant, Betty Raleigh leaned back in her chair, turning expectant eyes upon her companion.

"Now tell your aged maiden auntie all about it."

"Did I say I was going to tell you about it?"

"You said you weren't. Therefore I wish to know."

"I think I'm fired."

"Fired? From The Ledger? Do you care?"

"For the loss of the job? Not a hoot. Otherwise I wouldn't be going to fire myself."

"Oh: that's it, is it?"

"Yes. You see, it's a question of my doing my work my way or The Ledger's way. I prefer my way."

"And The Ledger prefers its way, I suppose. That's because what you call _your_ work, The Ledger considers _its_ work."

"In other words, as a working entity, I belong to The Ledger."

"Well, don't you?"

"It isn't a flattering thought. And if the paper wants me to falsify or suppress or distort, I have to do it. Is that the idea?"

"Unless you're big enough not to."

"Being big enough means getting out, doesn't it?"

"Or making yourself so indispensable that you can do things your own way."

"You're a wise child, Betty," said he. "What do you really think of the newspaper business?"

"It's a rotten business."

"That's frank, anyway."

"Now I've hurt your feelings. Haven't I?"

"Not a bit. Roused my curiosity: that's all. Why do you think it a rotten business?"

"It's so--so mean. It's petty."

"As for example?" he pressed.

"See what Gurney did to me--to the play," she replied navely. "Just to be smart."

"Whew! Talk about the feminine propensity for proving a generalization by a specific instance! Gurney is an old man reared in an old tradition.

He isn't metropolitan journalism."

"He's dramatic criticism," she retorted.

"No. Only one phase of it."

"Anyway, a successful phase."

"He wants to produce his little sensation," ruminated Banneker, recalling Edmonds's bitter diagnosis. "He does it by being clever. There are worse ways, I suppose."

"He'd always rather say a clever thing than a true one."

Banneker gave her a quick look. "Is that the disease from which the newspaper business is suffering?"

"I suppose so. Anyway, it's no good for you, Ban, if it won't let you be yourself. And write as you think. This isn't new to me. I've known newspaper men before, a lot of them, and all kinds."

"Weren't any of them honest?"

"Lots. But very few of them independent. They can't be. Not even the owners, though they think they are."

"I'd like to try that."

"You'd only have a hundred thousand bosses instead of one," said she wisely.

"You're talking about the public. They're your bosses, too, aren't they?"