“You bet I do.”
“That’s wonderful,” she answered, “for you’ve only heard half of it. In July, August, and September, we will come here to Newport, and you will get to understand father’s—”
“Hold on,” cried Ben, “just a moment. That is absolutely impossible, Crystal. You don’t understand. The paper couldn’t keep me a day if I did that.”
“Ha!” cried Mr. Cord, coming suddenly to life. “There’s freedom for you!”
“That would be very cruel of the owners, Ben, but if they did—”
“It wouldn’t be cruel at all,” said Moreton. “They wouldn’t have any choice. I should have lost all influence with my readers, if it were known—”
“Glory!” said Mr. Cord. “Think of penalizing the first honest attempt to understand the capitalistic class!”
Ben stood silent, caught in the grip of an intellectual dilemma which he felt every instant would dissolve itself and which didn’t.
Crystal for the first time moved away from her father. “Those are my terms,” she said. “I stay with the man who agrees to them, and if you both decline them—well, I’ll go off and try and open the oyster by myself.”
There was a long momentous pause, and then Tomes’s discreet knock on the door.