“Mother, mother, don’t I tell you that it’s all advertisement?”
“What you tell me and what I can believe are coming to be two different things. I know what an advertisement in the paper is and I know what a letter is. This is a letter.”
Sam felt the hopelessness of further argument.
She had a simple-minded faith in the integrity of newspapers and the printed word, but he could at least show that the word could contradict itself. “Very well,” he said, “it’s a letter, and so is this.” He took a copy of the paper from his pocket. Stewart had kept his word, no great feat since he had a good idea of what his editor supposed the Sunday public to want, and a column of fervent correspondence flared under the heading of “The Social Evil.—Is the Pamphlet Justified?” Sam chose a letter which described Adams as a crusader and Branstone, his publisher, as a high-souled social reformer courageously risking misapprehension for principle and the right, calling the endorsement of the Rev. Peter Struggles to witness in proof of his irreproachable motives. “Well,” said Sam, “am I to be misapprehended after all, and by you?”
“You told me you wrote the other letter,” she said. “Don’t you mean that you wrote this one?”
“I don’t,” he said truthfully. He wrote his, attacking himself, on one side of Stewart’s desk, while Stewart at the other defended him. It had been great fun.
“And what,” she asked, “is the business affair you say you’re engaged on?”
“Why,” he said unguardedly, “it’s this.”
“Then I don’t misapprehend at all, my son. I apprehend very well. And you’ve worked Peter Struggles into it. Was that why you got engaged to Ada?”
“Mother!” he protested. “Doubt me if you like, but you must not doubt Mr. Struggles. He surely is above suspicion.”