HILDEGARDE. I'm ready if you are.
TRANTO. Oh! I'm ready. Secrecy was a great stunt at first. Letting out the secret will be an even greater stunt now. It'll make the finest newspaper story since the fearful fall of the last Cabinet. Sampson Straight—equals Miss Hildegarde Culver, the twenty-one year old daughter of the Controller of Accounts! Typist in the Food Department, by day! Journalistic genius by night! The terror of Ministers! Read by all London! Raised the circulation of The Echo two hundred per cent! Phenomenon unique in the annals of Fleet Street! ( In a different tone, noticing Hildegarde's face ). Crude headlines, I admit, but that's what Uncle Joe has brought us to. We have to compete with Uncle Joe....
HILDEGARDE. Of course I shall have to leave home.
TRANTO. Leave home!
HILDEGARDE. Yes, and live by myself in rooms.
TRANTO. But why?
HILDEGARDE. I couldn't possibly stay here. Think how it would compromise father with the War Cabinet if I did. It might ruin him. And as accounts are everything in modern warfare, it might lose the war. But that's nothing—it's mamma I'm thinking of. Do you forget that Sampson Straight, being a young woman of advanced ideas, has written about everything, everything —yes, and several other subjects besides? For instance, here's the article I was revising when you came in. ( Shows the title-page to Tranto.)
TRANTO. Splendid! You're the most courageous creature I ever met.
HILDEGARDE. Possibly. But not courageous enough to offer to kiss mamma when I went to bed on the night that that (indicating the article ) had appeared in print under my own name. You don't know mamma.
TRANTO. But dash it! You could eat your mother!