“At what? What, besides teaching, are you fitted to do?”
“I—I can dig,” he said, looking at her hopefully. “Anybody can dig. Men who dig eat—and have a place to sleep. What more is there?”
“A great deal more.... Have you no place to eat or sleep?” she said, suddenly.
“My landlady has set my trunk on the porch, and as for food, I breakfasted on berries.... They are not filling,” he added.
Carmel considered. In her few short days of ownership she had discovered the magnitude of the task of rehabilitating the Free Press. She had seen how she must be business manager, advertising solicitor, and editor, and that any of the three positions could well demand all of her time. It would be useless to edit a paper, she comprehended, if there was no business to support it. Contrariwise, it would be impossible to get business for a paper as futile as the Free Press was at that moment in its history.
“How,” she said, “would you like to be an editor—a kind of an editor?”
“I’d like it,” he said. “Then I could say to the public the things I’d like to say to the public. You can’t educate them. They don’t care. They are sunk in a slough of inertia with a rock of ignorance around their necks. I would like to tell them how thick-headed they are. It would be a satisfaction.”
“I’m afraid,” said Carmel, “you wouldn’t do for an editor.”
“Why not, I should like to know?”
“Because,” said Carmel, “you don’t know very much.”