Jean answered his laugh and felt better.
"Because if you do you'll eliminate my valuable assistance, and I think maybe I see light. How would you like to go on a paper?"
"What!"
"Oh, I'm not suggesting that you edit one, but there are several things of lesser importance, things that don't need more than an ability to write good English. If you have a sense of color, so much the better. I think perhaps you have. You'd rather like it in some ways, especially at first, but I don't think you'd ever be a howling success. You're not what they call 'a born newspaper woman.'"
"I don't believe I'm a born anything." Jean made no effort to still the quavering of her voice. She felt as if she had been struggling along a hard road by herself and some one had suddenly picked her up and carried her to a safe spot.
"Nonsense. Of course you are. Only it takes some of us a long time to find out. Would you really like to try it?"
"I should like it more than anything I can think of. How do I go about it? Just walk in and say: 'I'm not a born newspaper woman, but please give me a job'?"
"Hardly, though it might not be such a bad way. Anything that startles an editor looks like ability to him. But we'll be less original than that. Thompson of the Chronicle is going to start a new Sunday section and he's looking for some one. He wants some one with 'a new angle,' 'fresh viewpoint,' 'punch,' etc. These things to a real editor are like the golden calf to the ancient peoples. He grovels before them. His life is spent in a mad search for them."
"But I have no newspaper angle and no viewpoint at all."
"Patience, neophyte. That's only another name for a perfect greenhorn, with intelligence and an ability to manufacture, enthusiasm for the editor's pet schemes. Do you think you can do that, Jean?"