“And,” said Lalage, “advertisments pay the whole cost of newspapers nowadays. Any one who knows anything about the business side of the press knows that. Selby-Harrison met a man the other day who reports football matches and he said so.”
“Is it cocoa,” I asked, “or soap, or hair restorer?”
“No. It’s a man who wants to buy second-hand feather beds. I can’t imagine what he means to do with them when he gets them, but that’s his business. We needn’t worry ourselves so long as he pays us.”
“Lalage,” I said, “and Hilda, I am so thoroughly convinced of your energy and enterprise, I feel so sure of Selby-Harrison’s financial ability and I am so deeply in sympathy with the objects of your, may I say our, society, that if I possessed £300,000 you should have it to-morrow; but, owing to, recent legislation affecting Irish land, the ever-increasing burden of income tax and the death duties——”
“Don’t start rambling again,” said Lalage. “It isn’t in the least funny, and we’re both beginning to get sleepy. Nobody wants £300,000.”
“It takes that,” I said, “to run a newspaper.”
“What we want,” said Lalage, “is thirty pounds, guaranteed—ten pounds a month for three months. All you have to do is to sign a paper——”
“Did Selby-Harrison draw up the paper?”
“Yes. And Hilda has it upstairs in her trunk.”
“That’s enough,” I said. “Anything Selby-Harrison has drawn up I’ll sign. Perhaps, Hilda, you’ll be good enough—I wouldn’t trouble you if I knew where to find it myself.”