"I will be there within half an hour, if that will suit you," said Robert.
"Very well; I'll expect you."
Accordingly, Robert bade his friend adieu after lunch, and went immediately to the editor's room.
Mr. Dudley closed the door, first saying to his messenger, who sat in the anteroom;
"I shall be busy for some time, Eddie, and can't see anybody. If any one calls, tell him I am closeted with a gentleman on important business and can see nobody. Now, Pagebrook," he resumed, taking his seat, "you ought to quit teaching."
"Why?" asked Robert.
"Well, you're a born writer certainly, and if I am not greatly mistaken, a born journalist too. You have a knack of knowing just what points people want to hear about. I've been struck with that in every article you have written for me, and especially in this last one. Do you know I've rejected no less than a dozen well-written articles on that very subject, just because they treated every phase of it except the right one, and didn't come within a mile of that. Now you've hit it exactly, as you always do. You've got hold of precisely the things that nobody knows anything about and everybody wants to know all about, and that's journalism."
"Thank you," said Robert. "You really think, then, that I might make myself a successful journalist if I were to try?"
"I know you would. You have precisely the right sort of ideas. You discriminate between the things that are wanted and the things that are not. I have long since discovered that this thing that men call writing ability and journalistic ability isn't like anything else. It crops out where you would never look for it, and where you think it ought to be it isn't. You can't coax or nurse it into existence to save your life. If a man has it he has it, and if he hasn't it he hasn't it, and nobody can give it to him. It isn't contagious, and I honestly believe it isn't acquirable. And that's why I'm certain of you. You've shown that you have it, and one showing is as good as a hundred."
"I am greatly pleased," said Robert, "to know that you think so well of me in this respect, for I have resigned my professorship and determined to make my way, to the best of my ability, as a journalist, hereafter?"