“The thing that troubles me,” said Stewart admiringly, “is that I took you for a harmless lunatic. I’m only a journalist myself, with one foot in the Manchester Warden and the other in the Sunday Judge. I’m a Tory on Sundays and a Liberal on weekdays. I gave up honesty when I gave up being young, and I thought I knew the ropes by this time. But when I think that I took you for a guileless innocent, I want to go into a corner and kick myself hard.”
Sam found this rather alarming he knew that his use, or misuse, of Peter’s name was cunning, but began to regret that he had shown Stewart his pro posed cover. “But I get my review in the Judge?” he asked hardily.
“My son,” said Stewart, “you do. I’ve spent sixpence on coffee and half an hour on you. There’s good copy in this and I can’t afford to waste it. I’ve my living to earn, and Gerald Adams deserves the worst he’s going to get. At the same time, I’ll allow myself the luxury of telling you that yours is a lowdown game.”
“We didn’t make the world what it is, did we?” said Sam.
“And neither you nor I will leave it any better than we found it,” said Stewart, prophesying rashly with the boundless cynicism of his twenty-five years. “The worst of coffee,” he went on, finishing his cup, “is that it makes you thirsty. I’m going across the road for a drink. Do you have one with me?”
“No, thanks,” said Sam. “I have to see a printer.”
“Oh, yes. Well, why not the Judge Press? I daresay I could get you in there on the ground floor.”
“But they are not quite the right people for this. They print sporting papers, and——”
“You’ll die from overheated bearings in your brain-box,” said Stewart. “You think of everything.”
Sam had, at least, thought that a printer (however obscure by comparison was the Judge Press, whose works were a small town in themselves) who issued a religious paper was better for his purpose than the printers of the Sunday Judge, Sporting Notions and the Football Times. He went to Carter, Meadowbank & Co., who were on the verge of bankruptcy, but had the advantage of printing Christian Comfort and the Church Child’s Weekly, and arranged with them to print five thousand copies of Adams’ paper. Carter, who was the whole firm, looked askance at the title, but when Sam pointed out that the Rev. Mr. Struggles had approved of the contents, Carter succumbed at once, and did not even attempt a protest when Sam instructed him to print on the whole five thousand: